Augustine of Hippo’s Gnostic Influence on the Church (Part 1)

Published October 17, 2026October 17, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

I wanted to go through these referenced sources and summarize them and reproduce portions of the manuscript. Here are the sources:

THE CORE CONNECTIONS & ACCUSATIONS

Augustine’s Background: Critics point to Augustine of Hippo’s approximately nine years of involvement with Manichaeism, a religious movement with dualistic teachings, before his conversion to Christianity. Because Augustine’s writings significantly influenced John Calvin and later Reformed theology, critics question whether aspects of his earlier worldview influenced his understanding of sin and human nature. [1, 2]
Total Inability / Total Depravity: Manichaeism presented a deeply dualistic understanding of good and evil and the human condition. Critics argue that Calvinism’s doctrine of total inability—the “T” in TULIP, which teaches that fallen humanity cannot come to faith apart from God’s enabling grace—resembles this pessimistic view of human nature. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Material World and the Flesh: Gnostic movements often viewed the material world as inferior, corrupt, or even evil, although Gnostic beliefs varied. Critics argue that Augustine’s teachings concerning original sin, its transmission through human generation, and the effects of sexual desire reflect a similar pessimism about embodied human existence. They further contend that aspects of this outlook carried into later Reformed theology. [1, 2]

Today I want to deal with the first bullet point — “Augustine’s Background,” source #2 — I say TODAY because I want to open up some of those resources for a better deep dive, of which this is the first. I will try to offer some of the mentioned resources highlighted in the videos and partial transcripts in the videos or summaries.

These sources I put into my earlier post: “Is Calvinism a Heresy? (Bonus: Allie Beth Stuckey)“, and the first source I am opening up today is “Did Gnosticism Influence Calvinism? ‪@Soteriology101‬ Dr. Leighton Flowers Ruslan Interview“, and here is a partial transcript with the video:

Books explicitly mentioned in the video

Resource	Author(s) / details	Context in the transcript
Foundations of Augustinian Calvinism	Ken Wilson	Discussed as an accessible version of Wilson’s Oxford doctoral dissertation, examining the historical roots of Augustinian Calvinism.
Why I’m Not an Arminian	Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams	Cited by Leighton Flowers as a book by two Calvinist professors that acknowledges a difference between Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace and the tendencies of the Apostolic Fathers.

Important spelling correction: The transcript’s automatic transcription says “Why I’m Not an Armenian.” The intended title is Why I’m Not an Arminian.

Historical sources mentioned

Herman Bavinck — Mentioned as a Calvinist theologian whose writings are invoked in the discussion.
Lorraine Boettner — Mentioned as a Reformed historical and theological source. The transcript renders the name as “Buttner” or “Betner”; the likely intended author is Lorraine Boettner.
The Apostolic Fathers — Early Christian writers whose views on human nature, free will, and salvation are discussed through the quotation from Peterson and Williams.
Augustine of Hippo — His writings and theological development are the central historical subject.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion — Explicitly mentioned as a work in which Calvin cites Augustine extensively.

Partial Transcript:

Leighton Flowers

There’s also the book Why I’m Not an Armenian by two Calvinistic professors. They write, the semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. They say, quote, and a survey of the thought of the Apostolic Father shows that their argument is valid.

From Calvinist scholars Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams, Why I Am Not An Arminian, p. 39 (pages 35-41 quoted at the bottom):

Does the antipathy between Calvinism and Arminianism suggest that Pelagius, the arch-opposite of Augustine, is the proper ancestor of Arminianism? Calvinists have often sought to paint Arminianism in Pelagian colors. Associating your opponent with a position that the historic faith has repeatedly judged heretical can only help one’s cause. However, the allegation that Arminianism is Pelagian is unfortunate and indeed unwarranted. From Jacob Arminius and the ‘Remonstrance Articles’ on, the Arminian tradition has affirmed the corruption of the will by sin and the necessity of grace for redemption. Arminianism is not Pelagianism….The Semi-Pelagians thought of salvation as beginning with human beings. We must first seek God; and his grace is a response to that seeking. The Arminians of the seventeenth century, however, held that the human will has been so corrupted by sin that a person cannot seek grace without the enablement of grace. They therefore affirmed the necessity and priority of grace in redemption. Grace must go before a person’s response to the gospel. This suggests that Arminianism is closer to Semi-Augustinianism than it is to Semi-Pelagianism or Pelagianism.

Ruslan KD

Ruslan. Let’s talk about this idea of Gnosticism. You had a video up about Augustine, who’s the father of Calvinism. Augustine is who influenced John Calvin and Edwards and Martin Luther, who then influenced a lot of Charles Spurgeon and a lot of our guys today.

You could trace it all back to this gentleman named Augustine, who was a great thinker and a philosopher and all these amazing things. What people don’t know is that He came from a Gnostic background and that then impacted some of his views that you said were not there with the majority of Christians prior to Augustine.

So can you break down what Gnosticism is briefly and how it impacted some of Augustine’s views? Because I have a very specific segue that I deal with all the time with people in my community.

Can you give us just a brief breakdown of what Gnosticism is, how it impacted Augustine, how then that impacted John Calvin and Calvin?

Leighton Flowers

Saying what is Gnosticism can take some time because there’s a lot of different kinds of Gnosticism. Manichean Gnosticism, Manicheanism was the most predominant Gnostic group that many people would have heard of. And it was in particular what Augustine was for 10 years of his life. He was a Manichean Gnostic.

And Manicheanism is very, very different than Christian theology, but there are some similarities. And there are writings from the Manichaeans where they use many of the same proof texts like John 6.44 and other texts like that in order to demonstrate what they believe with regard to total inability.

In other words, one of the things they do teach, they have more of a dualistic view that there’s a good God and a bad God, an evil God and a good God. And they have a lot of different things that are not not like Christianity at all, but one of the things that’s similar to at least Calvinistic Christianity is that they believe that when we’re born, we’re born in a completely evil state and that we’re completely incapable of doing anything without a divine influence.

Ruslan KD

Sounds a lot like total depravity.

Leighton Flowers

Exactly. And so the argument is that this concept of total inability really did not originate within the Bible or early church teachings, but in a more Gnostic or Manichean philosophy of theistic determinism. Now that’s the argument.

But what’s interesting is if you even study John Calvin, he even says that the early church writings, he says they extol the powers of the human will. He says save the exception of Augustine, he said, are confused and they’re vacillating, they’re contradictory, and they extol the powers of the free will of man.

In other words, John Calvin, he wants to validate himself. His doctrines, he wants to make sure people believe them. And oftentimes, especially in that day of the Reformation, you would be reaching back to orthodoxy in order to establish your views as orthodox and as viable. And so he quoted from Augustine over 4,000 times in the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

And he admits, he says the early church writers, all the other early church writers prior to Augustine and even Augustine in his earliest writings, when he first converted out of Manichaeanism into Christianity for the first part of his Christian life, he did teach a doctrine of free will like you and I might believe it.

But only after many years and then eventually a debate with Pelagius does he begin to swing back, we believe, back into a more deterministic, philosophical way of thinking, and he begins to use some of the same arguments that you hear Manichaeans make.

Interesting, I recommend people read Ken Wilson on this particular subject. He’s taken his Oxford doctoral dissertation and made it into a smaller layman book that’s easier to approach than the one with seven different languages in it, and that’s huge.

And at our request, in fact, He was so gracious to do this, but at our request, he actually took his doctoral dissertation and broke it down to the basics and put it all into easy to approach, more English accessible. And it’s called the Foundations of Augustinian Calvinism.

And it really does kind of break down the roots of this and really goes through scholar after scholar after scholar who’s come to the same conclusion. And that’s what’s interesting about this. is not, you know, Leighton Flowers, the, you know, anti-Calvinist saying these things.

We’ve got quotes from Bavinck, Henry Herman Bavinck, who’s a well-known Calvinist, Lorraine Buttner, who is a well-known historical historian from the Calvinist. Matter of fact, Betner is the guy who made Tulip, the Across the Tulip, famous.

There’s also the book, Why I’m Not an Armenian, by two Calvinistic professors from Covenant Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert Peterson and Michael Williams. And they write this, they write, the semi-Pelagians were convinced, and semi-Pelagian is a pejorative term, we wouldn’t like that term, but that’s what they call us oftentimes, semi-Pelagians.

The semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. So notice what they’re saying. They’re saying that Augustine, the accusation from semi-Pelagians is that Augustine took a significant departure from the early church.

And they say, quote, and a survey of the thought of the apostolic fathers shows that their argument is valid. In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption, end quote.

In other words, I could read you about a dozen quotes here from Calvinist sources, not Armenian sources or provisional sources from actual Calvinistic historians who are intellectually honest enough to say, yeah, really Augustine is the first one on record to really begin to teach these doctrines.

And that’s just the fact of the matter. And it is a fact of the matter that he was influenced by Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichean Gnosticism. That’s just a fact of the matter. That’s a part of his testimony. It’s on record. It’s not a disputable matter.

And so I think many of the scholars who know what they’re talking about realize that Augustine really is the first one to systematize and to teach more Calvinistic theology in the church.

Ruslan KD

That’s interesting. So here is where the logical conclusion of some of that goes. If he then elevates how evil man is and makes man just utterly evil. And you’re saying this doctrine isn’t found in the early church. We don’t see any of the other church fathers who believe them.

And if man is super duper, utterly sinful, hates God this whole bit, well then the material world, which is what also Gnosticism believes, the material world, the physical world is also evil. And everything here is evil and everything here is bad. And so you get saved. God could have just zapped you straight to heaven, but he kind of just leaves you on earth to suffer for a while with all these other filthy humans that he may elect or not elect.

This becomes extremely problematic when it again goes back to my heart for people is, hey, I want people to live out Matthew 25. I want people to live out the parable of the talents, the taking care of the least of these, having an amazing marriage, a godly marriage, a godly family. honoring God with your time, talent, and treasure, this becomes disconnected and incompatible when the worldview is people are utterly evil, humans are utterly evil, the world’s all evil, everyone’s evil, everything’s evil, the material is evil, the physical is evil.

So then, man, should I take that promotion at my job so that I can get my family out of this two-bedroom apartment? Because we’re crammed in here. I literally had somebody ask me this at a Bible study. We’re crammed into this little itty bitty place with two bedrooms. We got four kids. But is it evil? Is it my flesh to take this promotion? Because I don’t know. I mean, does God want me to have influence at my job and have a promotion?

And I’m like, bro, there’s certain things you don’t need to pray about. Your family’s hurting because you’re crammed into into this freaking small apartment, take the promotion and honor your family, right?

And begin, this is seeped into almost every denominational camp has this very low view of the material world of the physical world, forgetting that Jesus comes into the material world in material form as a baby.

I have a four week old, a four week old. She can’t do anything. She just lays there, right? She just lays there. We got to move her. We got to, she got to clean her. Jesus comes as a human, as a baby, and has to be cared for a minute before he could do anything. in the material physical world,

and so many Christians are caught up in this idea of the material physical world that escalates to this persecution complex. Everyone’s out to get me. I’m A Christian victim. The world’s all bad. It’s all evil. What’s the point of honoring God with my time, talent and treasure? What’s the point of taking care of my body? And then it literally just becomes fatalism. Like, well, what’s the point? It’s just all going to hell. It doesn’t make any sense.

And I think this is a vast heresy that is, I mean, every camp, whether you’re Pentecostal, Calvinistic, whatever, has this very low view of the physical material world, has this very low view of the Imago Dean people, has this very low view of our time, talent, and treasure on this side of eternity.

And it’s very frustrating because I deal with it all the time. So I want to hear your thoughts on some of this. And am I seeing the connection from Calvin to Augustine to Gnosticism? Do I see that connection? Is it as connected as I’m making it out to be? What are your thoughts, Doctor?

Leighton Flowers

I mean, there are some aspects of what you’re talking about that I would definitely see as some connection points. I call it worm theology, where no matter what is said in the Bible about us being created in the image of God and all the good things that God says about his creation and it being good, that some people will overemphasize the evil of man and how unworthy and our worthlessness of man.

And there’s a balance. There’s always a biblical balance between the extremes. You’ve got the extreme on the one side is just saying we’re all really good people and nobody’s really bad. And everybody’s basically good. You got that side, which a lot of the world is more in that camp.

You got the other side, the worm theology guys that we’re absolutely viper and diapers. We’re just horrible and nothing good whatsoever. we’re just worthless, all these kinds of things.

And I think that the balance is in the middle of those two things, where we obviously have worth in Christ and that we are created in his image and we are image bearers of the divine. Therefore, God doesn’t make junk. We don’t want to criticize that which God has created because it’s his.

Now, we can’t also underemphasize the impact of sin and corruption in this world. And sometimes we’re accused of doing that, but that’s usually by people who haven’t heard us out and really understood what we’re saying.

Because like I said from the very beginning of this interview with you, we’re in bondage to sin. We’re in enmity with God. We have horrible corruption, but the gospel is sufficient. That’s the good news.

All of the bad news is just as bad on our view as it is on Calvinism. It’s just that we believe that the gospel is sufficient for those who are in that condition.

And whereas the Calvinist says the gospel is not sufficient for the world, that it has to, really what’s sufficient is irresistible grace, this effectual regeneration that is only for some people and not for everyone. And that’s not good news as far as I can tell. That doesn’t seem like very good news.

It’s just It’s just, hey, if you won the divine lottery, so to speak, and I know that sounds pejorative and that’s a bad way to put it, but it’s kind of what it boils down to. It’s like, we don’t know why God picked some people and not others. He just, he picked some people and not others. And if you happen to be one of the blessed ones that got picked, then he’s going to grace you with this miracle of faith to cause you to believe.

I just don’t see this as the tenor of scripture. Instead, what I see within scripture is the good news is yes, we’re all fallen, we’re broken, we’re sinful, we’re depraved, we’ve gone our own ways.

And therefore, what is our only hope? Our only hope is to turn to the Lord so as to be saved. And he has provided a way of salvation for every man, woman, boy, and girl that no one perishes for lack of atonement. No one perishes because they’re rejected by their God. Anyone and everyone can be saved. And that’s what we want to try to highlight.

The book excerpt I mentioned by two Calvinist professors that acknowledges a difference between Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace and the tendencies of the Apostolic Fathers will follow these quotes.

BTW, other Calvinists agree with professors Peterson and Williams, which is to say they agree that Augustine introduced something new into the church previously not found in the early Fathers. [RPT and other will add: actually, it existed, but in Gnosticism.]

Herman Bavinck:

In the early church, at a time when it had to contend with pagan fatalism and gnostic naturalism, its representatives focused exclusively on the moral nature, freedom, and responsibility of humans and could not do justice, therefore, to the teaching of Scripture concerning the counsel of God. Though humans had been more or less corrupted by sin, they remained free and were able to accept the proffered grace of God. The church’s teaching did not include a doctrine of absolute predestination and irresistible grace.

Loraine Boettner:

“It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century….They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination… They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free … this cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine…“

Robert Peterson and Michael Williams of Covenant Theological Seminary:

“The Semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. And a survey of the thought of the apostolic father’s shows that the argument is valid… In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption” (36).

Louis Berkhof [in The History of Christian Doctrines]:

“Their representations are naturally rather indefinite, imperfect, and incomplete, and sometimes even erroneous and self-contradictory. Says Kahnis: “It stands as an assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledged by all well versed in the matter, that all of the pre-Augustinian Fathers taught that in the appropriation of salvation there is a co-working of freedom and grace.”

Berkhof goes on to admit that “they do not hold to an entire corruption of the human will, and consequently adhere to the synergistic theory of regeneration…” (130).

Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons LTD, 2013), 34.

One aspect of Augustine’s understanding of grace needs further comment. As human beings were incapable of saving themselves, and as God gave his gift of grace to some (but not all), it followed that God had “preselected” those who would be saved. Developing hints of this idea to be found in the New Testament, Augustine developed a doctrine of predestination. The term “predestination” refers to God’s original or eternal decision to save some, and not others. It was this aspect of Augustine’s thought which many of his contemporaries, not to mention his successors, found unacceptable. It need hardly be said that there is no direct equivalent in Pelagius’s thought.

Here is that excerpt…

Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 35–41.

(PDF of these pages)

Semi-Pelagianism and the Synod of Orange

Although Pelagius was condemned by the bishop of Rome in 417 and then after his death by the Council of Ephesus in 431, he certainly did not set out to be a heretic. Bernhard Lohse makes the point that Pelagius’s intent was “to elevate the difficult ascetic demands which were then permeating monasticism to a position of a fundamental principle for all Christians.” While Pelagius’s inordinately low view of sin and grace might—and should—strike us as scandalous and indeed heretical, Lohse does not exaggerate when he notes that “there is hardly an opinion” in Pelagius’s teaching on sin and grace “for which some confirmation could not be found among the earlier fathers of the church.” Indeed, one could easily argue that it was Augustine, not Pelagius, who was out of step with the tradition of the church.

The generation after Augustine and Pelagius would give birth to the Semi-Pelagian movement. Monks like John Cassian and Vincent of Lérins agreed with Augustine regarding the seriousness of sin, yet they objected to his ideas of the total and disabling bondage of the will to sin, the irresistible power of grace and predestination as predicated upon a particular election. In 434 Vincent of Lérins wrote the Commonitory, which contained both a polemic against Augustine’s doctrine of grace as a dangerous innovation and a description of the Catholic principle of tradition that would become normative for the church. The Augustinian understanding of sin and grace, said Vincent, is contrary to the ancient tradition of the church, “that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense ‘Catholic,’ which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universality.”^[1]

While affirming the necessity of grace for salvation, early Christian theological reflection tended to be highly moralistic and even legalistic, emphasizing a view of the Christian life that focused more on conduct—often expressed as rigorous prescription—rather than grace, faith or forgiveness. In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption. For them, salvation is the result of a working together of divine grace and human agency. Human beings are fallen such that they need divine help, but that help cooperates with our own striving toward God and the moral life. The synergism in pre-Augustinian thought held that divine grace is necessary for salvation but that our salvation is as much the product of the exercise of human free will and obedience to the law of God as of grace.

The Semi-Pelagian monastics affirmed the free will and ability of human beings. Yet they were far removed from the humanistic monergism of Pelagius. The Semi-Pelagians insisted that human beings cannot be saved apart from the supernatural assisting grace of God. But the fallen human will is not held in bondage to sin; it is not completely disabled by sinful corruption. Human beings can, unaided by grace, take the first step toward salvation. John Cassian held that human nature is weakened but not disabled by sin; we are fallen but able, fallen enough that we need help, but not so fallen that we cannot contribute to our own recovery. Cassian wrote, “And when He [God] sees in us some beginnings of a good will, He at once enlightens it and strengthens it and urges it on towards salvation, increasing that which He Himself implanted or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts.”^[2] In Semi-Pelagian synergism, human beings are the initiators of faith. Grace is responsive to our search for God and the good. God helps those who help themselves.

Throughout the fifth and early sixth centuries, the Augustinians and the Semi-Pelagians continued their debate, until the bishops met in 529 at the Synod of Orange to seek a resolution of the controversy. Even a century after his death, Augustine’s influence was so great that the synod sought to expunge any lingering strands of Pelagianism within the church. This does not mean, however, that the bishops affirmed Augustine’s teaching in its entirety. Somewhat inconsistently, they affirmed the doctrine of original sin and Augustine’s teaching on the bondage of the will, but they failed to affirm the doctrine of predestination. They argued that the freedom of the will has been destroyed by sin such that the only thing inherent in fallen humankind is “untruth and sin.”^[3] Faith is not initiated by human beings and then completed by divine grace so that God’s work is dependent upon people. Rather, faith begins in the illuminating work and infused presence of the Holy Spirit, which “precedes” and “enables” human beings’ response to grace.^[4]Much of the language of the Canons of the Council of Orange was taken directly from the works of Augustine. For example, using a citation from Augustine himself, the canons rejected the Pelagian charge that Augustine’s teaching was deterministic: “Men do their own will and not the will of God when they do what displeases him; but when they follow their own will and comply with the will of God, however willingly they do so, yet it is his will by which what they will is both prepared and instructed.”^[5]

Any goodness or righteousness that humankind displays is the result of God’s grace working in them. But this should not be taken as evidence that the Synod of Orange affirmed Augustine’s gracious monergism. The synod softened the Augustinian teaching into a gracious synergism. First, as stated above, the synod did not endorse predestination. The canons explicitly reject predestination to damnation,^[6] but they are completely silent concerning predestination to redemption. Second, while the synod insisted that the initiation of faith begins with the work of grace, it suggested that human agency cooperates with the divine in order to produce redemption. This synergism is subtly but crucially different from that of the Semi-Pelagians. While both see redemption as the product of both divine grace and human effort, the Semi-Pelagians depict redemption as beginning with human agency. The Semi-Augustinian synergism of Orange reversed the sequence. Hence, a person’s contribution to salvation is faithful response to the grace of God. Grace is prevenient here in that it precedes human response.

Nevertheless, there is a problem with the conclusions of the synod. If faith is a gift of God in that the seeds of faith are found in a grace that precedes the actual expression of faith in the responsive heart, and if grace must be given to people enabling them to respond (for a person cannot take the first step toward God), how does one account for the fact that not all respond in faith to the gospel? It seems that the bishops at Orange sought to escape having to address this question.

While the synod held that divine grace is necessary unto faith, its refusal to affirm the particularism of Augustine’s doctrine of predestination seems to be an implicit affirmation of universal preceding grace. That is, universal repairing and enabling grace is given to all, but each person must obediently respond to the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved.

Where Do Calvinism and Arminianism Fit?

The Calvinist understanding of the doctrines of sin and redemption closely conforms to Augustine’s gracious monergism. Redemption is utterly the work of grace. Does the antipathy between Calvinism and Arminianism suggest that Pelagius, the arch-opposite of Augustine, is the proper ancestor of Arminianism? Calvinists have often sought to paint Arminianism in Pelagian colors. Associating your opponent with a position that the historic faith has repeatedly judged heretical can only help one’s cause. However, the allegation that Arminianism is Pelagian is unfortunate and indeed unwarranted. From Jacob Arminius and the “Remonstrant Articles” on, the Arminian tradition has affirmed the corruption of the will by sin and the necessity of grace for redemption. Arminianism is not Pelagian.

If Arminianism cannot be traced back to Pelagius, perhaps the Semi-Pelagianism of John Cassian and Vincent of Lérins is the ancestor of Arminianism. Both Semi-Pelagianism and Arminianism insist upon a synergistic view of redemption. A person’s salvation is the result of two agencies: (1) God’s grace and (2) human faith and obedience. But here again, there are important dissimilarities. The Semi-Pelagians thought of salvation as beginning with human beings. We must first seek God; and his grace is a response to that seeking. The Arminians of the seventeenth century, however, held that the human will has been so corrupted by sin that a person cannot seek grace without the enablement of grace. They therefore affirmed the necessity and priority of grace in redemption. Grace must go before a person’s response to the gospel. This suggests that Arminianism is closer to Semi-Augustinianism than it is to Semi-Pelagianism or Pelagianism. The word Pelagian as a description of Arminians—or Roman Catholics for that matter—does them an injustice because it associates them with a theological tradition that is truly heretical in that Pelagius trivialized grace, and in so doing trivialized the work of Christ. Both the Semi-Augustinians of the fifth and sixth centuries and the Arminians of the seventeenth century sought understandings of sin and redemption that were qualifications of Augustinianism. Semi-Augustinianism was not a Pelagianism that had moved toward Augustine but rather a softening of Augustinianism that sought to modify or excise elements of Augustine’s teaching that were found offensive (particularist election and a doctrine of divine agency that seemed to render human agency irrelevant). As Arminianism began as a reaction to the Augustinian commitments of the Reformed churches and reacted negatively to much the same issues as had the Semi-Augustinians, Arminianism is properly understood as Semi-Augustinianism.

Yet we should appreciate the reality that the four positions sketched here as coming out of the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy of the fifth century do not exhaust the list of possible ways that sin and redemption can be understood or the ways in which divine agency can be thought of as relating to human action and decision making. Yes, Augustinianism (salvation is all of God’s grace) and Pelagianism (salvation is the product of human achievement) do seem to mark the polar extremes. But what lies between might be more of a continuum than a few discrete points. Between the two monergistic poles is the admixture, the synergism of dual agency in redemption. The realization of a continuum of beliefs may help us understand something of the diversity of belief within a tradition.

In 529 the Synod of Orange declared Semi-Pelagianism a heresy and declared a form of Augustinianism to be the official teaching of the Roman Church. Yet the emphasis upon the cooperation of human agency in redemption left a space for Semi-Pelagian ideas to flourish in popular belief. Even though the synod did not affirm a doctrine of meritorious works and insisted that God’s grace is the sole efficient cause of salvation, a Semi-Pelagian—and often an outright Pelagian—view of human agency would dominate in common folk belief. Indeed, the customs and structures that arose within the medieval Roman Church would lean toward a view of Christianity as a religion of performance, merit and obligatory rite. Something quite similar seems to exist within the Arminian tradition. Popular Arminian writing often tends to be so dismissive of anything that might qualify “libertarian free will” that it gives itself over to a moralist and meritorious doctrine of redemption. Redemption is offered by God, but we must earn it. This is, of course, the very danger that the Calvinist sees in all synergistic understandings of redemption.

But we Calvinists have our own version of popular or folk belief as well. If Arminian popular belief tends toward the overestimation of human ability and the redemptive contribution of human achievement, Calvinist popular belief often seems to overemphasize its redemptive monergism. We seek to out-Augustine Augustine. If a little monergism is good, more is better. As a result, we make God the sole cause of all things, sin as well as grace, unbelief as well as belief. And human beings do become mere pawns or actors walking through the scenery of their lives.

The Augustine-Pelagius controversy is our first monumental historical event. This controversy sets the stage for the following two chapters, which focus on issues keenly debated by Augustine and Pelagius and still disputed today: predestination and the perseverance of the saints.

NOTES

[1] Vincent of Lérins Commonitory for the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies 2.6.

[2] Quoted in Olson, Story of Christian Theology, p. 283.

[3] Canons of the Council of Orange, para. 1-2, 13, 22.

[4] Ibid., para. 3-7, 18.

[5] Ibid., para. 23.

[6] Ibid., para. 25.

Is Calvinism a Heresy? (Bonus: Allie Beth Stuckey)

Published October 13, 2026October 16, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

VIDEO VIA IDOL KILLER!

For the entire video by Idol Killer, see: “What is the Gospel? – Allie Beth Stuckey vs John Mark Comer“

For clarity and historical depth: The first four belonged to the Western Latin Church, the historical church that developed into the Roman Catholic Church. They were not Eastern Orthodox councils. The first four gatherings occurred before the Great Schism of 1054, the conventional date associated with the separation between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Christianity.

They therefore belong to the history of the Western Church, although their geographical and political settings differed. Mainz and Quierzy, in particular, were Frankish synods rather than ecumenical councils of the entire Christian church.

Jerusalem in 1672 was different: it was an explicitly Eastern Orthodox synod responding to Protestant theology, including doctrines associated with Calvinism.

Council or synod	Church tradition	Historical setting
Arles (475–480 AD)	Western Latin Church	Late Roman Gaul, in what is now southern France
Orange (529 AD)	Western Latin Church	Southern Gaul, now France; associated with Caesarius of Arles
Mainz (848 AD)	Western Latin Church	The Carolingian Frankish Church, in what is now Germany
Quierzy (853 AD)	Western Latin Church	The Carolingian Frankish Church, in what is now northern France
Jerusalem (1672 AD)	Eastern Orthodox Church	Convened under Patriarch Dositheus II of Jerusalem

Council of Arles (475–480 AD)

Issue: Human freedom, predestination, and the extent of Christ’s atonement

Arles required the priest Lucidus to renounce propositions associated with an extreme form of predestinarian teaching. These included the denial of meaningful human freedom after the Fall, the claim that Christ did not die for the salvation of all, and the idea that some people were predestined to damnation.

Connection to the “later” TULIP (explained in APPENDIX):

Total Depravity: Challenges interpretations that eliminate any meaningful capacity to respond to God’s gracious initiative.
Limited Atonement: Challenges the claim that Christ’s death was not intended for the salvation of all.
Unconditional Election and Reprobation: Raises objections to certain formulations of predestination to damnation.

The central question is whether God’s sovereignty and humanity’s fallen condition require the conclusion that human responses are determined by God rather than genuinely resistible.

Second Council of Orange (529 AD)

Issue: The necessity of grace and predestination to evil

Orange affirmed that fallen humanity cannot turn to God or embrace saving faith apart from God’s prior grace. It rejected the idea that God predestines people to evil and emphasized the necessity of divine grace in salvation.

Connection to the “later” TULIP (explained in APPENDIX):

Total Depravity: Orange affirms humanity’s dependence on grace, but does not establish every later Calvinist claim about spiritual inability.
Unconditional Election: Its teachings raise questions about how election and condemnation should be understood, although Orange did not settle every later debate over election.
Determinism: Its rejection of predestination to evil challenges interpretations in which God’s decree is understood to determine sinful actions in a way that makes God the ultimate determiner of evil.

The important distinction is between God permitting and governing a world in which sin occurs and God determining that particular sinful choices must occur. The council’s rejection of predestination to evil is relevant to that distinction, though it does not by itself settle the modern debate over theological determinism.

Synod of Mainz (848 AD)

Issue: Gottschalk’s doctrine of double predestination

The Synod of Mainz condemned Gottschalk of Orbais, who taught a form of double predestination: God predestines some people to eternal life and others to eternal death. His position also included a restricted understanding of the beneficiaries of Christ’s death.

Connection to the “later” TULIP (explained in APPENDIX):

Unconditional Election: Related to the teaching that God elects individuals to salvation independently of their response.
Limited Atonement: Gottschalk held that Christ died for the elect rather than for all people.
Double Predestination: His formulation raises the question of whether God’s decree determines not only who will be saved but also who will be condemned.

This is particularly relevant to the historical debate over whether reprobation is simply God’s decision not to elect certain people or a positive predestination to damnation.

The distinction matters because later Calvinists have offered different explanations of reprobation and do not all formulate it identically.

Synod of Quierzy (853 AD)

Issue: Predestination to salvation versus predestination to sin and damnation

The proceedings against Gottschalk began earlier, but the doctrinal statement associated with Quierzy dates to 853. It affirmed predestination to salvation while distinguishing it from God’s foreknowledge of those who would be condemned. It also affirmed God’s desire to save all and the universal scope of Christ’s redemptive provision.

Connection to the “later” TULIP (explained in APPENDIX):

Unconditional Election: The synod’s account of election and condemnation differs from formulations of double predestination.
Limited Atonement: Its affirmation of universal redemption conflicts with strict formulations that limit Christ’s saving provision to the elect.
Determinism: Its distinction between predestination to salvation and foreknowledge of condemnation challenges the claim that both outcomes should be understood as equivalent acts of divine predetermination.

From a Provisionist perspective, this distinction is important: God’s sovereign provision of salvation does not necessarily entail that God determines which individuals will believe or refuse to believe.

Synod of Jerusalem (1672 AD)

Issue: Unconditional predestination and the Reformed understanding of salvation

The Synod of Jerusalem, associated with Patriarch Dositheus, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, responded to Protestant teachings it regarded as inconsistent with Eastern Orthodox doctrine. Its confession rejected unconditional predestination as it understood the Calvinist position and emphasized the relationship between divine grace and human response.

Connection to the “later” TULIP (explained in APPENDIX):

Unconditional Election: The synod rejected the Calvinist formulation of unconditional predestination that it addressed.
Irresistible Grace: Its understanding of grace and human response differs from the Calvinist claim that saving grace effectually brings the elect to faith.
Perseverance: Its broader understanding of salvation differs from the Reformed account of the perseverance of the saints.

Jerusalem is the most direct example in this list of an ecclesiastical body addressing doctrines identified with Calvinism after the Reformation.

One qualification: it was an Eastern Orthodox synod, so its decisions represent the doctrinal position of that church, rather than a universally binding judgment accepted by all Christian traditions.

Augustine, the Father of TULIP?
Examining the Historical Foundations of Augustinian-Calvinism

Introduction: Did Calvinism Begin with Augustine?

The five points of Calvinism, commonly summarized by the acronym TULIP, are among the most recognizable features of Reformed theology. They describe a system of salvation involving humanity’s inability to come to God apart from divine grace, God’s unconditional election of individuals, the particular intent of Christ’s atonement, the effectiveness of saving grace, and the perseverance of the saints.

But where did this theological framework originate?

Many Calvinists appeal to Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430), one of the most influential theologians in Western Christianity. John Calvin himself acknowledged Augustine’s enormous influence on his theology. The question, therefore, is not whether Augustine influenced Calvinism. The more significant question is whether Augustine’s later teachings on determinism, election, grace, and perseverance supplied the historical foundation for the distinctive doctrines later associated with TULIP.

Kenneth M. Wilson directly addresses this question in two works:

The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism (2019), which develops his historical argument concerning Augustine’s theological development and the philosophical and religious influences he believes shaped it.
“Calvinism Is Augustinianism,” Chapter 6 of Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique (2022), which presents a more concise version of his argument within a broader critique of Calvinism’s historical foundations.

Wilson makes a particularly strong claim: Augustine was the historical father of the theological framework underlying TULIP.

According to Wilson, Augustine’s later theology represented a significant departure from the earlier Christian emphasis on human freedom to respond to God’s gracious offer of salvation.

That conclusion is controversial. Nevertheless, Wilson’s historical argument raises an important question for anyone examining Calvinism:

Did Augustine recover the original Christian understanding of predestination, or did his later theology introduce a deterministic interpretation that substantially departed from earlier Christian thought?

1. Augustine’s Importance to Calvinism

Augustine is a towering figure in the history of Western Christianity. His writings influenced medieval theology, the Protestant Reformation, and subsequent debates about sin, grace, election, and salvation.

Wilson emphasizes that Calvin’s dependence on Augustine was substantial. In Calvinism Is Augustinianism, he quotes Calvin acknowledging that he could express his theology through Augustine’s writings. Wilson also notes that Calvin cited Augustine hundreds of times in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Wilson cites other Reformed writers who acknowledge this relationship. The Reformed theologian Loraine Boettner famously characterized the Reformation as essentially a revival of Augustinianism.

Wilson also cites Matthew McMahon’s (a Calvinist arguing in favor of Augustine’s influence on TULIP) argument that Augustine, rather than Calvin, had already systematized much of what later became known as the five points of Calvinism. These admissions establish an important historical connection: Calvin did not develop his theology in isolation. He inherited and adapted an extensive theological tradition, and Augustine was a major source within that tradition.

One aspect of Augustine’s understanding of grace needs further comment. As human beings were incapable of saving themselves, and as God gave his gift of grace to some (but not all), it followed that God had “preselected” those who would be saved. Developing hints of this idea to be found in the New Testament, Augustine developed a doctrine of predestination. The term “predestination” refers to God’s original or eternal decision to save some, and not others. It was this aspect of Augustine’s thought which many of his contemporaries, not to mention his successors, found unacceptable. It need hardly be said that there is no direct equivalent in Pelagius’s thought.

Alister E. McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (Malden, MA: Wiley & Sons LTD, 2013), 34.

However, influence does not establish that Augustine and Calvin taught identical doctrines in every respect. The issue is the relationship between Augustine’s later theological framework and the distinctive doctrines subsequently associated with Calvinism.

The filtered systematization of the five points of Calvinism which have been brought to the modern church as the doctrines of grace were originally systematized and widely written on, not by Calvin, but by Augustine. This is why one finds that every four pages written in the Institutes of the Christian Religion John Calvin quoted Augustine. Calvin, for this reason, would deem himself not a Calvinist, but an Augustinian. And both Augustine and Calvin would really deem themselves children at the feet of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible, especially quoting their favorites passages from the Apostle Paul over and over again.

They are Pauline, and bibline, to the glory of Jesus Christ. To work backwards, then, one moves from the doctrines of grace today, to the Synod of Dordt, to the Institutes of the Christian Religion by Calvin, to the writings of Augustine, to the Bible. The biblical record is the foundation for all that came after concerning grace. It is no wonder why Augustine, even in his own day, was deemed the “Doctor of Grace.” Here we turn to him for this study.

This work is concerned with the writings of Augustine to determine Augustine’s views on the doctrines of grace (or what has become to be known as Calvinism or TULIP) and if his views are the same as John Calvin‘s, or for that matter the Synod of Dordt, the Westminster Confession and other reformed viewpoints on the Gospel that have been since penned. Knowing that the Bible does not change, and the matters of faith and practice in the Bible do not change, one should find Augustine’s words and thoughts about grace lying within the same veins as any reformer who believed the Gospel of grace, or any Puritan afterwards. It is easy to see where the Reformers or Puritans believed these doctrines. Again, those who believe these doctrines are referred to as “Calvinists.” But why are they not referred to as Augustinians? This is the scope of the study. Is it determinable that instead of calling one who believes the doctrines of grace a Christian Calvinist, should they be more likely deemed an Augustinian Calvinist? Are those terms interchangeable? Did Augustine believe these doctrines in the same way that Calvin, or the later Puritans did, or even Calvinists today?

C. Matthew McMahon, Augustine’s Calvinism: The Doctrines of Grace in Augustine’s Writings (Coconut Creek, FL: Puritan Publications, 2012), 7–9.

2. The Turning Point: Augustine’s Development Toward Determinism

One of Wilson’s most important arguments concerns the development of Augustine’s theology over time.

Wilson distinguishes Augustine’s earlier Christian writings from his later writings on predestination, grace, and the human will.

According to Wilson, Augustine initially defended a view of human freedom that allowed people to respond to God’s gracious offer of salvation. During this period, Augustine opposed Manichaean teachings that made human destiny dependent on a unilateral divine determination that left no genuine alternative response.

Wilson argues that this changed around AD 412, during Augustine’s controversy with Pelagius and Caelestius.

In Wilson’s reconstruction, Augustine increasingly adopted a theology in which God determined who would receive saving grace and who would not. Human beings remained responsible for their actions, but their ability to respond positively to God depended on God’s prior and decisive intervention.

Wilson calls this a form of “non-free free will”: people act voluntarily according to their desires, but their ultimate spiritual condition and saving response are determined by divine action rather than an independently exercisable ability to accept or reject God’s offer.

Why does Wilson identify AD 412 as significant?

Wilson argues that Augustine’s theological transition has often been dated too early, particularly to his work Ad Simplicianum, traditionally associated with approximately AD 396.

Wilson contends that Augustine continued defending positions compatible with human freedom for years after that work. He argues that the decisive shift becomes apparent around AD 412, when Augustine’s response to the Pelagian controversy led him to reconsider the implications of infant baptism, original sin, grace, and election.

Wilson believes this controversy was crucial because it forced Augustine to explain why some infants received baptism while others died without it, even though infants could not personally choose or reject baptism.

Wilson reconstructs Augustine’s reasoning as follows:

Baptism was understood to convey forgiveness of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit.
Infants could not personally choose baptism or exercise faith in the same manner as adults.
Some infants received baptism, while others died without it.
If baptism was necessary for salvation, the difference between those outcomes could not be explained by the infants’ own choices.
Augustine therefore concluded that God determined which infants would receive saving grace.

Wilson argues that this reasoning helped move Augustine toward unconditional election and a more comprehensive theology of divine determinism. The important point is that Wilson does not portray Augustine’s later theology as simply an unchanged continuation of his earlier writings. He argues that Augustine’s understanding of grace and predestination developed substantially in response to particular theological controversies.

3. The Philosophical and Religious Background: Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichaeism

Wilson’s argument goes beyond Augustine’s response to Pelagius. He contends that Augustine’s earlier philosophical and religious experiences influenced his later theology. In The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism, Wilson examines four major intellectual traditions: Stoicism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism.

His contention is that certain deterministic concepts found in these traditions reappeared in Augustine’s later Christian writings.

A. Stoicism: Meticulous providence and determinism

Stoicism taught a comprehensive understanding of providence in which events occurred within an ordered causal structure governed by fate.

Wilson argues that Augustine retained a strong conception of meticulous divine providence even after becoming a Christian. In this understanding, God’s providential ordering encompasses not merely broad historical purposes but the specific events and circumstances of human life.

Wilson sees a significant parallel between this conception and theological determinism: if every event is comprehensively determined by divine providence, then human decisions ultimately occur within an order from which they cannot finally depart.

This raises a question central to the debate between Calvinism and Provisionism:

Does God’s sovereignty require Him to determine every human choice, or can God sovereignly govern His creation while allowing people genuinely to respond to His gracious call?

Provisionists answer that God’s sovereignty does not require exhaustive divine determination of every human decision. God can accomplish His purposes while permitting meaningful human responses to His commands and offers.

Wilson argues that Augustine’s later understanding of providence moved away from the earlier Christian emphasis on divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

B. Neoplatonism: The corrupted will and the need for divine restoration

Wilson also examines the influence he attributes to Neoplatonic philosophy, particularly the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry. He argues that certain Neoplatonic concepts supplied a framework in which humanity’s fallen condition rendered the human will incapable of choosing the good without divine restoration.

Within Wilson’s comparison, this resembles the later Calvinist doctrine of total inability: the sinner cannot produce the saving response God requires unless God first acts to overcome that inability.

Wilson further argues that Neoplatonic thought offered a way to reconcile the absence of genuine alternatives with personal responsibility. A person could act voluntarily according to an existing disposition even if that disposition and the resulting action were ultimately determined. For Wilson, this resembles the compatibilist understanding of freedom found in some forms of Calvinism.

The comparison is important, but it requires precision. Neoplatonism was a diverse philosophical tradition, and its concepts should not automatically be equated with the full Reformed doctrine of total depravity. Wilson is arguing for a historical and conceptual relationship, not demonstrating that every Neoplatonic teaching is identical to Calvinist theology.

C. Gnosticism: A divinely differentiated humanity

Wilson also discusses Gnostic teachings in which humanity was divided into different spiritual categories. In some Gnostic systems, only a predetermined group possessed the capacity to receive saving knowledge, while others lacked the ability to attain salvation.

Wilson sees a structural resemblance between this idea and unconditional election understood as God’s unilateral determination of who receives the ability to believe. His comparison concerns the unequal distribution of saving ability: salvation may be proclaimed broadly, but only those specially enabled by divine action can ultimately respond.

This comparison should not be mistaken for a claim that Calvinists accept Gnostic cosmology or the Gnostic distinction between a good spiritual realm and an evil material realm. They do not need to hold those beliefs for Wilson’s narrower comparison to be relevant.

Calvinists desire to stand out among complacent Christians who might not be as educated in biblical studies as they are. At face value, being intellectual about the Bible is not an error in itself. That is, until intellectualism takes over. Dr. Ron Comfort, president and founder of Ambassador Baptist College in Lattimore, North Carolina, has noticed this. He observes the similarities between the ancient heresy of Gnosticism and present day Calvinism. He notes what the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia writes about Gnosticism:

Gnosticism is Christianity perverted by a learning and speculation. The intellectual pride of the Gnostics refined away the gospel into a philosophy making salvation exclusive and not universal. They lived under the conviction that they possessed a mysterious knowledge that could only be understood by them.

Comfort concludes with the question, “Now, I wonder, does that sound like something that is prevalent in our land today?” The parallels between Calvinism and Gnosticism are stunning. By speculative and intellectual assumptions, both Gnosticism and Calvinism deviate from orthodox Christianity in concluding that salvation is exclusive.

Micah Coate, A Cultish Side of Calvinism (2011), chap. 3, “The Marks of a Cult within Calvinism,” 66–67.

Gnosticism, as presented in the quotation: Salvation is associated with special knowledge unavailable to everyone.
Calvinism, as Coate characterizes it: Saving grace is given effectively to the elect, while others are not given the ability to respond savingly.

The question is whether a theological system that restricts the effective ability to respond to a predetermined group shares a significant structural feature with earlier systems that similarly differentiated the saved from the unsaved.

D. Manichaeism: Inability and unilateral divine intervention

Manichaeism is particularly important in Wilson’s argument because Augustine spent approximately nine years as a Manichaean hearer before becoming a Christian.

THE CORE CONNECTIONS & ACCUSATIONS

Augustine’s Background: Critics point to Augustine of Hippo’s approximately nine years of involvement with Manichaeism, a religious movement with dualistic teachings, before his conversion to Christianity. Because Augustine’s writings significantly influenced John Calvin and later Reformed theology, critics question whether aspects of his earlier worldview influenced his understanding of sin and human nature. [1, 2]
Total Inability / Total Depravity: Manichaeism presented a deeply dualistic understanding of good and evil and the human condition. Critics argue that Calvinism’s doctrine of total inability—the “T” in TULIP, which teaches that fallen humanity cannot come to faith apart from God’s enabling grace—resembles this pessimistic view of human nature. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Material World and the Flesh: Gnostic movements often viewed the material world as inferior, corrupt, or even evil, although Gnostic beliefs varied. Critics argue that Augustine’s teachings concerning original sin, its transmission through human generation, and the effects of sexual desire reflect a similar pessimism about embodied human existence. They further contend that aspects of this outlook carried into later Reformed theology. [1, 2]

Wilson contends that Augustine later returned to certain deterministic interpretations associated with his former religious environment, particularly when addressing the relationship between inherited sin, the human will, and saving grace.

In Wilson’s reconstruction, the human will cannot independently escape its corrupted condition. A decisive divine intervention must restore the capacity to respond, and this intervention is not equally effective for everyone.

Wilson argues that this pattern resembles the later Calvinist understanding of regeneration and effectual calling: saving grace does not merely offer assistance to a person who may respond; it effectively brings about the saving response in those whom God has chosen.

The important qualification is that resemblance does not establish identity. Manichaeism’s cosmology, its account of matter and evil, and its understanding of salvation differ fundamentally from historic Christian theology. Wilson’s argument concerns specific parallels in determinism, inability, and divine selection—not an assertion that Calvinism is simply Manichaeism under another name.

4. Augustine and the Five Points of TULIP

Wilson brings these historical arguments together in his discussion of the five points of Calvinism. He argues that Augustine’s later theology supplied the essential framework from which these doctrines developed.

It is important to remember that TULIP is a later summary of Reformed theology. Augustine did not write a work organized under that acronym, and the five points were not formally formulated in their familiar arrangement during his lifetime.

Wilson nevertheless argues that the underlying theological ideas can be traced to Augustine’s later writings.

T — Total Depravity or Total Inability

The question: Can fallen human beings respond to God’s gracious offer of salvation, or must God first regenerate them so that they can believe?

Wilson argues that Augustine’s later theology developed a particularly strong understanding of humanity’s inability.

According to Wilson, Augustine moved beyond the idea that humanity is sinful, morally weakened, and dependent on grace. He increasingly taught that fallen humanity lacked the ability to make a saving response to God unless God first intervened.

Wilson connects this development with Augustine’s changing understanding of original sin. He argues that Augustine’s later doctrine involved inherited guilt and condemnation, rather than merely the mortality, moral weakness, and propensity to sin associated with his earlier writings.

Wilson also examines Augustine’s interpretation of passages such as Romans 5:12 and Psalm 51:5, arguing that Augustine’s later conclusions differed from his earlier understanding.

For Wilson, this change was foundational because the remaining doctrines of TULIP followed logically once humanity was understood to be totally unable to respond to God.

The Provisionist objection:

Humanity’s universal sinfulness does not necessarily establish that people have no ability to respond to God’s gracious call. Provisionism maintains that fallen people cannot save themselves, earn salvation, or come to Christ independently of divine grace. Nevertheless, God graciously provides what is necessary for people to respond to the gospel.

The disagreement is not whether grace is necessary. It is whether grace must first regenerate a person in order to make faith possible.

U — Unconditional Election

The question: Does God choose individuals for salvation without reference to their response to His gracious offer, or is election conditional upon faith that God foreknows?

Wilson argues that Augustine’s later doctrine of election developed from his understanding of humanity’s inability and the necessity of divine intervention.

His discussion of infant baptism is central. Because infants could not personally exercise faith or choose baptism, Wilson argues that Augustine concluded their salvation depended on God’s unilateral decision to provide the means of salvation.

Wilson contends that Augustine then extended this logic to humanity more generally. God determines who receives the saving grace necessary for faith, while others do not receive that grace.

Wilson uses the term “Divine Unilateral Predetermination of Individuals’ Eternal Destinies” (DUPIED) to distinguish this form of determinism from election understood in relation to God’s foreknowledge of human responses.

In Wilson’s interpretation, Augustine’s later understanding of election resembles the unconditional election taught in Calvinism.

The Provisionist objection:

Conditional election does not mean that people earn their salvation. God determines the gracious provision and the condition under which its benefits are received. Faith is not payment for salvation; it is the means by which a person receives what God has provided in Christ.

Provisionists therefore distinguish God’s sovereign decision to save believers from the claim that God unconditionally determines which individuals will believe and which will remain unable to believe.

L — Limited Atonement

The question: Did Christ die with the intention of saving only the elect, or did He provide atonement for all humanity, with its saving benefits received by those who believe?

Wilson argues that limited atonement follows logically from Augustine’s later understanding of election and providence.

His reasoning is that if God unilaterally determines who will be saved, and God’s providential purposes cannot ultimately fail, then Christ’s atoning work must be understood in relation to the people God has determined to save.

Wilson believes Augustine’s later theology increasingly restricted the saving intent of Christ’s death to the elect. He examines Augustine’s attempts to interpret 1 Timothy 2:4, which says that God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Wilson argues that Augustine struggled to reconcile the universal language of this passage with his increasingly deterministic understanding of divine sovereignty.

An important qualification is necessary here: Wilson acknowledges that Augustine did not always state the later doctrine of limited atonement in the explicit form familiar from Reformed confessions. Wilson’s claim is that Augustine’s later premises implied a restriction of Christ’s saving work to the elect.

The Provisionist objection:

Universal atonement does not require universal salvation. Christ’s death can be sufficient and intended for all without every person receiving its saving benefits. The atonement is God’s provision; faith is the means of receiving its benefits.

The central question is whether Christ’s death was provided for all people or exclusively for those whom God unconditionally determined to save.

I — Irresistible Grace

The question: Can a person resist God’s gracious call to salvation, or does God’s saving grace unfailingly produce the response He intends?

Wilson argues that Augustine’s later theology treated saving grace as an effective divine action that brings about the sinner’s saving response.

He connects this understanding with the philosophical and religious traditions he believes influenced Augustine, particularly their emphasis on divine intervention to restore an otherwise incapable will.

Wilson’s argument is that once total inability and unconditional election are accepted, irresistible grace follows naturally. If only those unconditionally elected receive the grace necessary to believe, and God’s decision to save them cannot fail, then saving grace must effectively secure their response.

In this framework, the person believes willingly, but the ultimate outcome is determined by God’s prior action.

The Provisionist objection:

Grace can be necessary, powerful, and entirely initiated by God without being irresistible. God calls, draws, convicts, reveals, and provides. A person does not overpower God by resisting His grace; rather, God has sovereignly permitted a genuine response to His gracious initiative.

Provisionism rejects the assumption that God’s saving purpose must be accomplished by determining every person’s response to the gospel.

P — Perseverance of the Saints

The question: Is perseverance guaranteed to every genuinely regenerated believer, or does final salvation depend on a special divine gift that determines who will persevere?

Wilson gives this point a distinctive historical treatment.

He argues that Augustine developed the doctrine of a special gift of perseverance to explain why some people who had received baptism and the Holy Spirit continued in faith while others subsequently fell away.

In Augustine’s developing framework, according to Wilson, the initial reception of grace did not necessarily guarantee final perseverance. God therefore had to grant an additional gift to those who would ultimately persevere.

Wilson sees this as a historical precursor to the perseverance doctrine later incorporated into TULIP.

However, this is also where an important distinction appears. Augustine’s account of perseverance does not map neatly onto the modern Calvinist assertion that everyone who is genuinely regenerated will certainly persevere to the end. Wilson argues that Augustine’s baptismal theology allowed for people who had received the Holy Spirit to fall away without receiving the additional gift of perseverance.

The historical point:

Wilson is not simply claiming that Augustine and modern Calvinists used different words for precisely the same doctrine. He is arguing that Augustine developed a theological solution to a problem that later became part of the Reformed understanding of perseverance, while the details of the two positions differ.

5. How the Five Points Fit Together

Wilson’s argument is not that Augustine independently developed five unrelated doctrines. He believes the doctrines emerged as interconnected consequences of a more fundamental change in Augustine’s understanding of the human will, divine sovereignty, and saving grace.

His proposed sequence can be summarized as follows:

Total inability: Fallen humanity cannot make a saving response without prior divine intervention.
Unconditional election: God determines which individuals receive the grace necessary for salvation.
Effectual grace: God acts to ensure that those chosen respond to His saving call.
Limited atonement: The intent and application of Christ’s saving work are restricted to those God has determined to save.
Perseverance: God grants the additional grace necessary to ensure the final salvation of those who will persevere.

This is a summary of Wilson’s historical and theological reconstruction, not a claim that Augustine himself presented the doctrines in this exact order or in the modern terminology of TULIP.

Wilson’s argument is that the system developed from a foundational premise:

God’s unilateral determination of the individual’s eternal destiny, rather than a genuine human response to God’s universally offered grace.

Once that premise is accepted, Wilson contends, the remaining doctrines follow with considerable logical consistency.

The Provisionist challenge is directed at the foundational premise itself. If Scripture teaches that God graciously provides salvation to all, genuinely calls people to believe, and permits them to accept or resist His call, then the remaining points of TULIP cannot simply be assumed to follow from God’s sovereignty.

6. What About the Early Church Fathers?

One of Wilson’s strongest historical claims is that Augustine’s later determinism represented a significant departure from earlier Christian thought.

In both works, Wilson argues that the earlier Christian tradition generally defended human freedom to respond to God’s gracious provision while rejecting forms of unilateral determinism associated with Stoicism and Gnostic or Manichaean teachings.

He discusses figures such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. Wilson interprets their writings as evidence that early Christian authors generally affirmed divine foreknowledge, grace, and predestination without concluding that God unilaterally determined each individual’s eternal destiny independently of that person’s response.

He also argues that Augustine’s earlier writings were more consistent with this understanding before his later theological shift.

If Wilson’s historical reconstruction is correct, this raises a significant question for appeals to church tradition:

should Augustine’s later theology be treated as the definitive interpretation of the early Christian consensus, or should it be examined against the writings of earlier Christian authors?

7. From Augustine to Luther and Calvin

Wilson traces the subsequent influence of Augustine through the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, drew heavily on Augustine in his understanding of grace and the bondage of the will. His 1525 work The Bondage of the Will became a major statement of his rejection of the idea that fallen humanity could independently choose salvation.

John Calvin likewise drew extensively on Augustine. Wilson argues that Calvin’s theological system adopted and further developed Augustine’s later understanding of predestination, human inability, and divine sovereignty.

This helps explain the term Augustinian-Calvinism. It describes the historical and theological relationship between Augustine’s later doctrines and the Reformed system associated with Calvin.

Nevertheless, Calvinism is not a single, unchanging body of thought in every historical detail. Later Reformed theologians developed, refined, and systematized their doctrines, and Calvinists disagree among themselves on a number of issues.

The five points of Calvinism were formally articulated in their familiar confessional setting at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), long after Augustine and Calvin. Wilson’s argument is therefore best understood as a claim about the historical roots of the underlying theological ideas, not the literal existence of the TULIP acronym in Augustine’s writings.

8. Does This Mean Calvinism Is Gnosticism or Manichaeism?

No—not in the sense that the systems are identical. This distinction is essential to a responsible historical critique.

Wilson argues that certain deterministic concepts in Augustine’s later theology bear significant similarities to concepts found in Stoicism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism. He believes Augustine incorporated elements of these earlier systems into his Christian interpretation of Scripture.

That is a claim about intellectual influence, historical development, and structural resemblance.

It does not mean that Calvinists accept every doctrine of these ancient philosophical or religious traditions. Historic Calvinism affirms the Christian doctrines of creation, the incarnation, the Trinity, the resurrection, and the goodness of God’s creation—positions that distinguish it sharply from important aspects of Gnostic and Manichaean systems.

The relevant question is narrower:

Did certain concepts concerning determinism, human inability, selective divine intervention, and saving grace enter Augustine’s later theology through philosophical and religious influences that differed from earlier Christian teaching?

Wilson answers yes.

His critics dispute aspects of his historical reconstruction and the degree to which the similarities demonstrate actual doctrinal dependence.

A fair assessment should examine the primary sources, the chronology of Augustine’s writings, and the specific doctrines being compared rather than treating a historical resemblance as proof of complete theological identity.

9. The Provisionist Alternative: Grace Without Theological Determinism

For those approaching the question from a Provisionist perspective, the historical discussion raises a deeper theological issue.

Does God’s sovereignty require Him to determine every human decision, including who will believe the gospel? Or can God sovereignly provide salvation, initiate the work of grace, and genuinely call people to repentance and faith without determining their response?

Provisionism maintains that salvation is entirely dependent on God’s gracious provision in Jesus Christ. Fallen humanity cannot earn salvation or save itself. God initiates the work, Christ provides the atonement, and the gospel calls people to believe.

But the fact that salvation is entirely of grace does not necessarily mean that God must unilaterally determine which individuals will believe.

The five traditional Provisionist affirmations can be summarized this way:

Human sinfulness: All people are sinful and need God’s grace, but sinfulness does not automatically establish total inability to respond to God’s gracious call.
Conditional election: God determines the condition of faith for receiving salvation; believers do not earn their election or salvation.
Universal atonement: Christ’s atoning work is provided for all humanity, although not everyone receives its saving benefits.
Resistible grace: God graciously calls and enables people to respond, but His gracious invitation can be resisted.
Faith and perseverance: Faith is not a meritorious work, and genuine Christian faith is to be lived out in continuing trust and obedience to Christ.

These affirmations do not deny God’s sovereignty or the necessity of grace. They reject the conclusion that grace must operate through the unilateral determination of every individual’s saving response.

From this perspective, Wilson’s historical argument is relevant because it challenges the assumption that theological determinism is the only possible way to understand divine sovereignty, election, and grace.

Conclusion: Examining the Foundation Rather Than Merely the System

Kenneth Wilson’s The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism and his chapter “Calvinism Is Augustinianism” offer a sustained historical challenge to the idea that the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism simply represent the uncontested teaching of the earliest Christian tradition.

Wilson argues that Augustine’s later theology departed from his own earlier emphasis on human freedom and developed a deterministic framework influenced, in Wilson’s interpretation, by Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichaeism. He further argues that this framework became a major historical foundation for the theology later associated with Calvin and the five points of TULIP.

His most important contention is that total inability and unconditional election were foundational changes from which the other doctrines followed. He sees irresistible grace, limited atonement, and perseverance as interconnected consequences of Augustine’s later understanding of divine providence and saving grace.

These are substantial claims, and they should not be treated as established merely because Wilson presents them forcefully. His historical reconstruction is contested, and Calvinist theologians offer alternative readings of Augustine and the early church fathers.

Nevertheless, the questions he raises deserve serious consideration:

Did Augustine’s theology of predestination develop significantly during his controversy with Pelagius?
How did Augustine’s earlier philosophical and religious experiences affect his later understanding of divine providence?
To what extent did Calvin inherit Augustine’s later theology, and where did later Reformed theology develop it further?
Does the early Christian evidence support the claim that theological determinism was the original Christian understanding of salvation?
Does God’s sovereignty require the unilateral determination of every individual’s eternal destiny, or can God sovereignly provide salvation while allowing a genuine response to His grace?

For Provisionists, the central concern is not simply whether Augustine influenced Calvin. That influence is well established. The deeper concern is whether the deterministic features of Augustine’s later theology faithfully represent the biblical teaching on God’s character, universal saving provision, divine grace, and human responsibility.

The historical question and the biblical question must ultimately be considered together. A doctrine’s antiquity does not prove its truth, and a doctrine’s later development does not automatically disprove it. Each must be tested against Scripture and examined in its historical context.

The issue, then, is not whether Augustine was an important Christian theologian. It is whether the particular theological framework that developed in his later writings—and that Wilson identifies as the foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism—provides the most faithful account of God’s sovereignty and His gracious offer of salvation to humanity.

BONUS:

Allie Beth Stuckey gets early church history wrong:

Debating the Causal Chain | Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon

Published September 11, 2026September 12, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Subtitle: From Theological Determinism to the Antecedents of Human Choice

What Follows

Before turning to Bignon’s book, I want to establish the record from the debate itself. The three clips that follow are brief, but they are important. They show that Bignon repeatedly and explicitly affirms theological determinism, including the statement that “God determines everything that happens.”

With that foundation established, I will then turn to Bignon’s book, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God, to examine how he develops that position in greater detail—particularly his treatment of the antecedent conditions of human choice, divine providence, human desires, and moral responsibility. The question is not simply what Bignon calls his position, but whether his own explanation ultimately resolves—or reinforces—the determinist problem.

Debate Evidence #1 — Bignon Explicitly Affirms Theological Determinism

(Dinesh D’Souza): Guillaume, if I may, I just want to put that question to you that ended my summary. I’m happy to address all the issues that you raised in your opening remarks. But the first question I asked, because as you know from the sort of Twitter debate, the X debate, there’s so much of you don’t understand, this is not what we believe, this is not what we think. So I want to ask you, as a sort of leading Calvinist and philosopher of Calvinism, this description, this description of strong sovereignty on God’s part that I gave, do you agree with it or not?

(Guillaume Bignon): Well, it’s not just a lump sum, like everything. They have a lot of different things and there’s certainly some things that I would say differently, but let me be very clear. I affirm the theological determinist position. So yes, God determines everything that happens. These are the two views. It’s either that the choices of men are determined by all of those circumstances at the moment of choice or holding them in place, it’s still the case that they could choose one or the other categorically open. These are the two views and there’s [no] shying away, God determines those things.

Evidence: Bignon explicitly identifies himself with the theological determinist position and states plainly, “God determines everything that happens.”

Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 45:00–46:30.

Debate Evidence #2 — D’Souza Identifies the Antecedent Conditions

(Dinesh D’Souza): Here’s what I want you to admit to, and I hope you will, because I think this is what you believe, that even though God determines our brain states, God determines all our past, our past events, the family we’re born into, the books we read, the influences inside my brain. God determines everything on the inside and therefore my very desires, my preferences, my wishes, including my desire from God, ultimately is determined internally by God himself. Is that true or is that false?

(Guillaume Bignon): Are you asking me again if I affirm theological determinism? Because I understand I have a French accent, but I thought I really repeated this a number of times. I affirm theological determinism.

Evidence: D’Souza explicitly lays out the antecedent conditions he believes follow from Bignon’s theological determinism—past events, family, books, internal influences, brain states, desires, preferences, and wishes. Rather than rejecting the underlying determinist premise, Bignon responds by again appealing to his affirmation of theological determinism.

Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 1:31:00–1:32:30.

Debate Evidence #3 — Bignon Again Refuses to Retreat from Theological Determinism

(Dinesh D’Souza): But I think I’ve given an accurate picture of what you are saying and I think it would help the debate if you say, Yes, I agree, or No, I’m saying something different about David.

(Guillaume Bignon): There was so much going on here that I don’t agree with all the formulation. I don’t know how much clearer I can be about saying that I affirm theological determinism.

Evidence: When given a direct opportunity either to affirm D’Souza’s characterization or explain that he is saying something fundamentally different, Bignon objects to “all the formulation,” but once again explicitly reaffirms his position: “I affirm theological determinism.”

Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 2:00–2:30.

EVIDENTIARY PROGRESSION

Evidence #1:

“I affirm the theological determinist position. So yes, God determines everything that happens.”

Evidence #2:

D’Souza identifies what that means for the antecedent conditions of human choice; Bignon does not abandon theological determinism.

Evidence #3:

When challenged to affirm or deny D’Souza’s characterization, Bignon again says, “I affirm theological determinism.”

This gives us a solid video record before we bring the book back into the analysis.

GUILLAUME BIGNON’S BOOK

Guillaume Bignon’s Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil offers an extended philosophical defense of Calvinism against the charge that theological determinism undermines human moral responsibility and implicates God in evil.

The work is especially relevant to the present argument because Bignon does not avoid the language of determinism. Rather, he seeks to explain how determinism, divine providence, human freedom, and moral responsibility can be coherently held together. The following excerpts examine that argument on Bignon’s own terms, with particular attention to what his account entails when the antecedent conditions leading to human choices are themselves under God’s providential control.

… Let us then examine these active/passive counterfactuals of determinist free will. For any given sinner and sin about which one wants to maintain a language of divine permission in the sense under discussion, Calvinists would have to affirm:

1) If God were to actively intervene, the sinner would not commit the sin

And,

2) If God were to passively refrain from intervening, the sinner would commit the sin.

To establish the coherence of the model at hand, the question to address is this: how can Calvinists affirm those propositions, and more specifically, how could God be said to “passively refrain” from anything, if he is determining even the very choice to sin? To answer this question, let me begin by drawing an important distinction between two different sorts of causal factors that are at play in determining whether or not the sinner will sin. That human decision is influenced by two sorts of such factors: on the one hand are this person’s nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice, and on the other hand are all the immediate influencers at that moment of choice: which circumstances he is placed in, and which forces— internal and external, natural and supernatural—are, on that moment, drawing him in different directions to make his choice one way or the other. Note that this conceptual distinction is uncontroversial: these two types of influences are affirmed by all libertarians as well. Only they maintain that all these influences do not collectively determine the choice one way or the other, but they do influence it.⁴¹⁸ This uncontroversial distinction, then, allows Calvinists to affirm this: God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences, but his so-called “passivity” or “refraining from intervention” can be expressed legitimately with respect to his supernatural influence on the moment of choice. That is a point at which Calvinists can find a very legitimate asymmetry of divine action. If God were to refrain from that active drawing on the moment of choice, then the sinner would sin, because all that would be left within him to express itself in decision-making would be his nature and prior character, which of course Calvinists affirm are corrupted by original sin. Apart from God actively extending his grace to them, fallen sinners sin. “Man without grace can will nothing but evil,” says Martin Luther.⁴¹⁹ The doctrine of original sin, understood very minimally as entailing that humans have a fallen nature that inclines them uniformly toward sin (no need here for anything stronger like total depravity, original guilt or anything remotely controversial for Christians), explains the truth of one of our two counterfactuals: “If God were to refrain from divine intervention (namely an inner intervention in the form of a positive drawing of grace on the heart of the fallen sinner), the sinner would sin.”

This conclusion is secured for every choice made by persons affected by original sin. Of course, one may raise the question of Adam’s sin, but I shall come back to it later. For now, let us turn to the second counterfactual in the pair, namely “If God were to actively intervene, the sinner would refrain from sinning.” It is all the more easily affirmed by Calvinists in light of their doctrine of so-called “irresistible grace.”⁴²⁰ There is according to Calvinists no amount of sinful inclination that divine grace cannot overcome. Philosophically, this comes from their upholding determinism, and it yields exactly the desired theological result: there always exists a type of supernatural drawing available to God, such that if he were to apply it, the sinner would refrain from sinning and would do the right thing instead. This secures the counterfactual at hand, and with it the truth of the active/passive counterfactual pair, thereby justifying the asymmetry at the moment of choice in this specific type of situation, and hence an appropriate language of divine permission in the face of determinism.

NOTES

418. “Of course this should not be taken to mean that freedom is the absence of influences, either external or internal. For someone to act, certain causal conditions are necessary. Rather, it means that these do not determine or necessitate our choices or actions.” Reichenbach, “Reformed View of God,” 69. See also Walls and Dongell, Not a Calvinist, 107.

419. Luther, Bondage of the Will, 318.

420. It might even be that no one but Calvinists can affirm such strong counterfactuals.

Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 262–63, nn. 418–20 (p. 275).

HIGHLIGHTED QUOTES

Here Bignon acknowledges the very point at issue: God’s involvement does not begin at the moment of choice; on Calvinism, God has already determined the conditions that shaped the sinner and continues to determine what happens at the moment of sin.

“I suppose that one could object that focusing in this way on God’s action at the moment of sin in relative disregard to his prior involvement in the person’s character-building is inappropriate …for Calvinists as they must maintain that God determined both…. The point was not to relieve God from his control of evil, whether in creating sinners or in providentially controlling their sins….On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.” —p. 263

And the very next paragraph reinforces the point:

“the sled was initially placed on the track by the very same persons who subsequently piloted it down the track. They are thoroughly causally responsible for its present sliding down the track…” —p. 264

PASSING COMMENTS

The determinist implications of Bignon’s account are evident from his own formulation. He explains that the sinner’s decision is determined by two layers of causal factors: first, “nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice”; and second, the immediate circumstances and “forces—internal and external, natural and supernatural” operating at the moment of choice.

This framework is significant because Bignon then states that “God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences.” The choice, therefore, is not presented as arising in isolation. Rather, the person arrives at the moment of decision with a given history, nature, character, set of desires, circumstances, and operative influences already in place—and Bignon maintains that God providentially controls them all.

Bignon then introduces the decisive counterfactual. If God were to intervene with a particular supernatural influence, the sinner would choose differently; if God refrains from that influence, the sinner will sin. On this account, the choice appears to be the inevitable result of the antecedent conditions God has providentially arranged, together with the particular divine influence—or non-influence—God supplies at the moment of choice.

The difficulty, then, is that Bignon’s account appears to generate an internal tension. On the one hand, he insists that Calvinism does not diminish divine control:

“On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.”

He also anticipates the objection that it is improper to focus on God’s action at the moment of sin while neglecting God’s prior involvement in forming the person’s character, and he acknowledges that Calvinists “must maintain that God determined both.”

On the other hand, Bignon seeks to preserve a morally significant distinction between God’s “active” intervention and His “passive” refraining, so that the sinner’s sin may still be described as something God merely “permitted.” Yet the relevant features of the case remain comprehensive:

God controls the person’s nature and history, controls the circumstances, controls the internal and external influences, and controls the supernatural influence at the moment of choice.

Given those premises, Bignon attempts to locate the morally relevant distinction in God’s decision either to apply or withhold that final supernatural influence. The problem is that the allegedly “passive” condition under which the sinner sins is itself embedded within a divinely determined causal order. Accordingly, the appeal to passivity does not remove the determination of the choice. It merely distinguishes between which divine determination produces the choice.

For this reason, Bignon’s “passivity” should not be understood as ordinary passivity. If I merely refrain from interfering with another person’s decision, it does not follow that I have determined what that person will do. Bignon’s model, however, is stronger: God has already providentially controlled the entire background that brings the person to the decision, and Bignon states that the sinner would sin if God refrained from the relevant supernatural intervention. In that context, the “refraining” itself becomes consequentially determinative.

Stated differently, if God determines all the antecedent conditions that determine what the sinner will choose, then it is unclear what “permission” can mean other than God’s determination of the sinner’s choice through a different point in the causal chain.

This point does not depend on D’Souza’s characterization of Bignon’s position. The statement “On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things” is Bignon’s own wording.

KNEE DEEP

Bignon’s Own Words: God Determines the Whole Process

The significance of Bignon’s discussion on pages 258–59 becomes much clearer when it is read alongside what he says later on pages 262–63. Taken together, these passages establish a continuous account of divine determination that begins well before the moment of human choice. This is important because the argument does not require us to reconstruct what Bignon must believe from his affirmation of theological determinism. Bignon himself describes God as determining the antecedent conditions that lead to the choice.

In the burglar analogy, Bignon first explains why the ordinary passer-by is different from God under Calvinism. The passer-by has encountered the burglar but has not participated in creating the person who stands before him.

The action of “permitting” is supposed to feature a “hands-off” attitude, almost a passive disengagement on the part of God. It must be a “refraining” from some sort of intervention, thereby letting, or allowing, the evil action to unfold without stepping in. These concepts are the reason why determinism is thought to be problematic here, because if God determines all things, how can he be “hands-off” anything in the requisite sense?

To answer that question and unpack these notions of passivity, permission, and asymmetry, it is helpful to start with a simple, intuitive, and uncontroversial example, which captures well the sense of permission we are looking for. Suppose that a burglar is climbing up a ladder to break into the window of a 3^rd floor apartment, when a passer-by approaches the foot of the ladder and sees him up there, halfway to the top, climbing to break in. At this point, the passer-by has a decision to make.

Among the numerous possibilities open to him, two of them are of special interest for us: on the one hand, he could decide to prevent the burglary, say by pushing down the ladder and tripping the burglar. If he were to do so, the burglary would be prevented. Otherwise, if for whatever reason the passer-by thinks it preferable not to do so (he might find it wrong to send the burglar to a likely hospital bed, or he might be scared by the prospect of a future vengeance, or any good reason one could imagine), he then might decide to refrain from intervening, passively allowing the burglary to occur.

This sort of situation captures very well the intuitions at play when we think of “permission” of evil in the sense relevant for our present purposes. The asymmetry in the passer-by’s action is easy to appreciate here: whether or not the burglary occurs is at this point fully under his control; it is providentially up to him, but depending on which option he chooses, his action will vary in kind: if he decides against the burglary, he will need to actively, intently, perform the positive action of pushing the ladder, thereby preventing the evil at hand. But if he finds it preferable for the burglary to occur, then his control will be a purely passive refraining from any intervention, thereby permitting this evil, knowing that if he were to not intervene, the burglary would occur.

This situation exhibits the sense of asymmetry we are looking for, and I suggest that if theologians are to properly apply permission language to God, it will involve something very much like that.

But of course, some differences between the passer-by and God (especially on Calvinism) immediately come to mind. For one, the passer-by is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation, nor does he actively draw on the burglar’s heart and mind to influence his decision at the moment of choice, whereas on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place, and when it comes to “intervening” or not, though external interventions of the same type as “kicking a ladder” are certainly available to God, the type of intervention Christians typically have in view is an internal intervention, providentially influencing the hearts and minds of persons directly. These points are well taken and I shall discuss what can and cannot carry over when applying these concepts to God.

Nevertheless, there is something that the ladder-kicking passer-by and the burglar tell us about permission and asymmetry in divine providence, and I suggest that it is this: they tell us that proper use of permission language to rescue asymmetry in one’s providential activity rests upon the truth of two important conditional, counterfactual statements that were casually stated above in the discussion of the passer-by. These two statements were as follows:

1) If the passer-by were to actively intervene (by kicking the ladder), the burglar would not commit the crime.

And,

2) If the passer-by were to passively refrain from intervening, the burglar would commit the crime.

BIGNON’S ROW TO HOE

Bignon specifically says that the passer-by:

“is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation” — Bignon, p. 258

God, however, is fundamentally different within the Calvinist model. Bignon writes:

“whereas on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place” — Bignon, p. 259

He then explains that the divine involvement is not restricted to external circumstances. The intervention Calvinists have in view can be internal, involving God:

“providentially influencing the hearts and minds of persons directly.” — Bignon, p. 259

This is the first important link in the argument. Bignon is not merely saying that God determines what happens after a person has developed a particular character. He explicitly says that God “providentially determines the character and choice” in the first place. The character that precedes the choice is therefore itself within God’s providential determination. That becomes even more significant when Bignon later explains what he means by the influences that lead to a human decision. He divides them into two categories. The first consists of the person’s:

“nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice” — Bignon, p. 262

The second consists of the immediate influences present when the choice is actually made:

“which circumstances he is placed in, and which forces—internal and external, natural and supernatural—are, on that moment, drawing him in different directions to make his choice one way or the other.” — Bignon, p. 262

Bignon then makes the crucial statement:

“God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences.”
— Bignon, p. 262

That statement is particularly important because it closes off an obvious escape route. One might otherwise argue that although Calvinism says God determines the choice, the various conditions that produced the person who makes that choice remain outside God’s determining activity. But that is not Bignon’s description. He explicitly includes nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, extending from conception to the moment of choice, and then says that God is in “full providential control” of those influences.

Bignon even anticipates the objection that his focus on God’s action at the moment of sin might appear to disregard God’s earlier involvement in forming the person. He acknowledges the issue directly:

“one could object that focusing in this way on God’s action at the moment of sin in relative disregard to his prior involvement in the person’s character-building is inappropriate” — Bignon, p. 263

But Bignon does not answer by denying that prior involvement. Quite the opposite. He says Calvinists:

“must maintain that God determined both” — Bignon, p. 263

and then states:

“On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.” — Bignon, p. 263

That is a remarkable admission in the context of the argument. Bignon recognizes that God’s involvement cannot simply be restricted to the final moment of choice, because Calvinism maintains that God has already determined the conditions involved in the person’s character-building. His answer is not to retreat from that claim, but to affirm it.

The chronology Bignon gives us is therefore important. There is a prior history—nature, nurture, life events, and character formation. That history produces a particular character and set of inclinations. There are then immediate circumstances and internal and external influences at the moment of choice. And finally there is the choice itself. Bignon places God’s providential determination across this entire sequence.

His own description can therefore be laid out simply:

The important point is that this chain is not something we have constructed by taking Bignon’s premises and extending them beyond what he actually says. Bignon supplies the links himself. He says that God determines everything that comes to pass; he says God providentially determines the person’s character and choice; he says God is in full providential control of the influences extending from conception through character formation and of the immediate influences at the moment of choice; and he explicitly says, “God determined both” and “God clearly determines all these things.”

This becomes especially important for Bignon’s discussion of divine permission. The passer-by analogy works intuitively because the passer-by encounters an already-existing burglar. The passer-by did not create the burglar’s character, did not determine his criminal inclinations, and did not establish the history that brought him to that moment. The passer-by can therefore refrain from intervening without having determined the antecedent conditions that produced the burglary.

But Bignon himself says that the Calvinist case is different. The passer-by:

“is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation” — Bignon, p. 258

whereas:

“on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place.” — Bignon, p. 259

That is precisely where the question of permission becomes more difficult. If God merely encounters an independently formed agent and chooses not to prevent the agent’s action, the distinction between causing and permitting is relatively straightforward. But if God has already providentially determined the agent’s character, has control over the antecedent influences from conception onward, controls the circumstances and immediate influences surrounding the decision, and determines the choice itself, then God’s relationship to the evil cannot be analyzed solely by looking at whether God intervened at the final instant.

In other words, the question cannot simply be, “Did God intervene when the sinner made the choice?” Bignon’s own account requires us to look at what happened BEFORE the choice. And according to Bignon, God was already providentially determining the relevant conditions.

This is why the pages 258–59 passage is so important to the larger argument. It establishes the antecedent side of the equation, while pages 262–63 make that antecedent control explicit and comprehensive.

Bignon does not merely affirm that God determines the final decision while leaving the development of the person unexplained. He places the person’s character, character-formation history, nature and nurture, life events, circumstances, internal and external influences, and ultimately the choice itself within God’s providential determination.

So the argument does not need to say:

“If Bignon’s theological determinism is true, then God must control the antecedent conditions.”

The stronger—and more defensible—claim is:

Bignon says that God controls the antecedent conditions.

And that is what makes these passages so important. The issue is no longer merely what an opponent says Calvinism logically entails.

THE EVIDENTIARY RECORD COMES FROM
BIGNON’S OWN DESCRIPTION OF CALVINISM.

Reformational Determinism Undermines the Christian Witness

Published September 5, 2026September 11, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

See my:

The problem begins with the salvation appeal itself. The Calvinist tells the unbeliever, “You must believe and repent,” but then explains that the unbeliever cannot believe, cannot repent, and cannot come to Christ unless God first regenerates him. The person is therefore commanded to do what, by the system’s own definition, he is incapable of doing unless God first performs a work in him. The command remains, but the ability to fulfill the command does not.

What happens when an atheist takes Calvinism’s claims about faith, regeneration, and God’s sovereignty to their logical conclusion? In this conversation, an atheist (PineCreek) presses a Calvinist (Eli Ayala) on a simple question: If I cannot believe unless God first changes me, then who is ultimately responsible for my unbelief? Leighton Flowers examines the exchange and explains why he believes this exposes a serious problem with Calvinistic theology—especially when it comes to evangelism and human responsibility. Does Scripture teach that unbelievers are simply waiting for God to make them willing to believe? Or has God genuinely provided what is necessary for people to hear the truth, respond to the gospel, and be reconciled to Him?

This creates a serious tension concerning responsibility. The sinner is held responsible for his unbelief, yet he is told that he cannot overcome that unbelief unless God first gives him the ability to believe. In the exchange above, Derek Murrell from Irresistible Truth initially resists the conclusion that the unbeliever’s condemnation has anything to do with what God did or did not do. Yet when pressed, he acknowledges that the person cannot repent without God, cannot believe without God’s work, and finally agrees with fundementalist Christian turned atheist, Douglas Letkeman’s conclusion:

“every single person in hell today is in hell today… because of what God didn’t do.” His answer? “Correct.”

This is where John Hendryx’s admission becomes particularly important.

Hendryx explains that theologians use “compatibilism” to reconcile God’s sovereignty with human responsibility, but he explicitly acknowledges that “compatibilism is a form of determinism” and is “no less deterministic than hard determinism.” The Calvinist answer, therefore, is not to deny that God determines human choices, but to argue that a person can still be morally responsible for a choice that God has determined him to make. In other words, compatibilism doesn’t solve the determinism problem by denying that human choices are determined; it attempts to reconcile determinism with human responsibility by insisting that a determined choice can still be considered the person’s responsible choice.

And that is precisely where the problem arises. If God determines that one person will believe and another will remain in unbelief—and the latter cannot believe unless God first regenerates him—then what does “responsibility” actually mean? The Calvinist can say the unbeliever willingly rejects Christ, but the deeper question remains: could he have done otherwise without God first giving him the ability to do otherwise? If the answer is no, then simply calling him “responsible” does not explain how responsibility works; it merely asserts it.

John MacArthur, however, shows why that distinction raises a profound problem. He argues that if God is the primary cause and humans are merely secondary causes moved by that primary cause, then the determinism ultimately extends to the secondary cause as well. God is the one who ultimately “decided,” “compelled,” and “coerced” the action. In other words, the human being remains the immediate or secondary cause of the action, but that secondary cause itself is also determined by the primary cause. God remains the ultimate determining cause behind both the action and the secondary cause through which that action occurs.

Put these pieces together, and the tension becomes difficult to escape.

Hendryx acknowledges that compatibilism is determinism.

MacArthur highlights the problem that arises when the primary cause determines the secondary cause.

And the salvation conversation puts that problem into practical terms. The sinner is commanded to believe and repent, yet is told that he cannot believe or repent unless God first regenerates him. If God must provide that ability before the sinner can respond, and God chooses to provide it to some while passing over others, then the one who is passed over remains unable to produce the very response God requires of him.

The issue, then, is not whether Calvinism uses the word “responsibility.” It clearly does. The real question is whether calling a person responsible resolves the problem of his inability. If the sinner cannot believe, cannot repent, and cannot come to Christ unless God first acts upon him, then the decisive difference between the one who believes and the one who remains in unbelief is ultimately the prior work—or lack of work—of God. The sinner may willingly reject Christ, but according to this system, he cannot will himself out of that condition unless God first gives him the ability to do so.

And that brings us back to the most striking moment in the conversation. The conclusion is essentially this:

if God has to do something in me in order for me not to go to hell, and He chooses not to do it, what could I possibly do about it?

When that implication is put directly to Derek Murrell, his answer is simply: “Correct.” At that point, the question is no longer whether man is called responsible. The question is whether the decisive difference between salvation and condemnation ultimately rests in the sinner’s response—or in God’s sovereign determination to give or withhold the ability to respond.

GOSPEL COALITION article summary

One-Paragraph Summary

The article defends the Reformed doctrine of double predestination/reprobation, arguing that God’s eternal decree includes both the unconditional election of some individuals to salvation and the passing over of others, who are ultimately condemned according to divine justice. It appeals particularly to Pharaoh and Romans 9, arguing that God actively hardened Pharaoh and raised him up to display His glory, and that Paul’s “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” describe God’s sovereign distinction between individuals. The article further argues that reprobation logically follows from unconditional election: if God unconditionally chooses some but not all for salvation, then the others are necessarily excluded from that saving choice. It distinguishes preterition, God’s withholding of saving grace, from predamnation, God’s determination to judge the non-elect according to justice. Although Reformed theology maintains an asymmetry between election and reprobation, the article nevertheless places both salvation and condemnation within God’s eternal sovereign decree rather than treating the damnation of the non-elect as merely something God foreknows or passively permits.

SUMMARY OF THE GOSPEL COALITION ARTICLE: “THE DOCTRINE OF REPROBATION”

The article is a defense of the Augustinian/Reformed doctrine of reprobation, which teaches that God’s eternal decree concerns not only those whom He chooses to save, but also those whom He does not choose to save. In the author’s formulation, reprobation involves God eternally withholding saving grace from certain individuals and determining to judge them according to divine justice. The author therefore understands reprobation as more than God’s foreknowledge that certain people will reject Him; their exclusion from saving grace and ultimate condemnation fall within God’s sovereign eternal decree.

The article develops this position in three primary ways.

Scripture Teaches Reprobation

The author argues that Scripture directly supports reprobation, with Pharaoh and Romans 9 serving as the principal examples. In the Exodus account, the author rejects the interpretation that God hardened Pharaoh merely as a response to Pharaoh’s prior self-hardening. Instead, the article argues that God announced beforehand that He would harden Pharaoh and raised him up for the purpose of displaying His power and glory.

Romans 9 is presented as the clearest New Testament explanation of this principle. The author interprets Paul’s discussion of the “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” as teaching that God sovereignly distinguishes between individuals, preparing some for mercy and enduring others who are prepared for destruction. The purpose is ultimately God’s glory: His mercy and grace are displayed toward the elect while His wrath and power are displayed toward those destined for destruction.

Reprobation Logically Follows From Unconditional Election

This is one of the article’s most important arguments.

If salvation depends upon God’s unconditional choice of particular individuals, and God does not choose everyone, then there must necessarily be individuals whom God does not choose for salvation.

The author therefore argues that unconditional election necessarily entails reprobation. Simply calling the position “single predestination”—God predestines some to salvation but does not predestine anyone to condemnation—does not resolve the problem. According to the article, such a view leaves the destiny of the non-elect outside God’s purposeful decree, which the author considers inconsistent with God’s comprehensive sovereignty.

The argument is therefore:

Unconditional election → some are chosen → others are not chosen →
their exclusion from saving grace falls within God’s sovereign decree.

God’s sovereignty extends over salvation and human choices

The article’s argument does not stop with election. It presents God’s sovereignty as extending over everything that comes to pass, including human choices. Consequently, the distinction between those who believe and those who reject Christ ultimately falls under God’s sovereign will.

The doctrine is also presented as spiritually beneficial because it humbles humanity. Rather than viewing humanity as the ultimate reference point, believers are reminded that human beings exist for God’s glory and that God’s purposes, rather than human preferences, determine reality.

The Two Aspects of Reprobation

The article makes an important distinction between two aspects of reprobation:

Preterition — the negative aspect:
God eternally chooses not to extend saving grace to particular individuals. The article says this decision is not based on foreseen works, merit, or sin, but on God’s sovereign will.

Predamnation — the positive aspect:
God eternally determines to deal with those individuals according to divine justice. Reformed theologians disagree over whether this decree itself is conditioned upon foreseen or actual sin, but the article maintains that the ultimate condemnation of these individuals is included within God’s sovereign purpose.

The article goes further and states that the Augustinian/Reformed tradition agrees that God predestines certain individuals to be justly punished, and that at least some aspect of this reprobation is not based on foreseen sin but on God’s good pleasure, with the purpose of magnifying His justice and grace.

Is This Double Predestination?

In substance, yes. The article is defending a form of double predestination, although it insists that election and reprobation are not perfectly symmetrical. The distinction can be summarized this way:

The author specifically identifies the “asymmetry between election and reprobation” as an important qualification within Reformed theology. Thus, the article is not merely saying that God permits some people to reject Him. Its position is substantially stronger:

God’s eternal decree establishes both who will receive saving grace and who will be passed over, with the non-elect ultimately being condemned according to divine justice.

And the author’s fundamental argument is that this conclusion follows from the combination of unconditional election, God’s exhaustive sovereignty, and the author’s interpretation of passages such as Pharaoh and Romans 9.

Sproul’s View of Double Predestination (Logical Consequences)

Published September 4, 2026September 27, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Jump to the UPDATE inspired by the GOSPEL COALITION.

R.C. Sproul’s Statement on Predestination (from Chosen by God):

“What predestination means, in its most elementary form, is that our final destination, heaven or hell, is decided by God not only before we get there, but before we are even born. It teaches that our ultimate destiny is in the hands of God. Another way of saying it is this: From all eternity, before we ever live, God decided to save some members of the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish. God made a choice–he chose some individuals to be saved unto everlasting blessedness in heaven and others he chose to pass over, to allow them to follow the consequences of their sins into eternal torment in hell.” (Chosen By God, p.22, emphasis mine)

This is double predestination in practice, even if Sproul calls the active-positive version for reprobation a caricature.

If the elect cannot fail to be saved,
and the reprobate cannot be saved because God withholds the only grace capable of producing faith,
then what practical difference remains between active reprobation and passive reprobation?

Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

– Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 10.3

“Holy Spirit can save an infant by changing his heart, giving grace, and applying the merit of Christ to him. The Westminster divines certainly believed that babies can be saved. They did not teach that all infants are necessarily saved; rather, they taught that only an undetermined number of elect infants are saved. Obviously, an elect infant is going to be saved, and any saved infant is elect, but the divines did not speculate on which infants those would be.”

– R.C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2019), 321.

Sproul conforms his support for the ideas in the WCF:

One of the most important confessions of faith ever penned, particularly in the English-speaking world, is the Westminster Confession of Faith. By the confession’s own statements, no confession written by uninspired authors is to be taken as having supreme authority over the believer. Confessions cannot bind the conscience in the manner that the Word of God can and does. At the same time, though human confessions and creeds are penned by fallible people without the benefit of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the profound level of theological and biblical precision manifest in the Westminster Confession of Faith is awe-inspiring. (Ibid., xvii.)

[….]

The Westminster Confession is the most precise and accurate summary of the content of biblical Christianity ever set forth in a creedal form. Creeds such as the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Scots Confession should be highly regarded, but no historic confession surpasses in eloquence, grandeur, and theological accuracy the Westminster Confession of Faith. (Ibid., xix)

Critiquing the matter via CHAT:

The Internal Tension

Sproul writes:

“The Westminster divines certainly believed that babies can be saved. They did not teach that all infants are necessarily saved; rather, they taught that only an undetermined number of elect infants are saved.”

The immediate question is:

If only elect infants are saved, what happens to non-elect infants?

Historically, Westminster does not explicitly answer that question. Critics argue that the silence is revealing. If the Confession intended to teach universal infant salvation, it could have said:

“All infants dying in infancy are saved.”

Instead it says: “Elect infants.” Sproul defends that wording rather than correcting it.

Critique #1: Election Becomes the Ultimate Divider

Sproul affirms:

unconditional election,
total inability,
monergistic regeneration,
and reprobation.

Therefore, infant salvation cannot be based upon:

personal faith,
conscious belief,
repentance,
or moral innocence.

It must ultimately rest on election.

Critics respond:

If election alone determines which infants are saved, then election alone determines which infants are not saved.

Thus the question becomes: Why would God elect some infants and not others? Sproul never provides a clear answer.

Critique #2: Original Guilt Creates the Problem

Sproul consistently taught:

Adam’s guilt is imputed to humanity,
infants are fallen,
infants need Christ’s grace.

Critics agree infants need grace but ask:

Does inherited guilt alone make an infant deserving of eternal punishment?

Many opponents argue Scripture consistently ties judgment to:

knowledge,
personal rebellion,
actual transgression.

Examples often cited:

Deuteronomy 1:39
Isaiah 7:15-16
Jonah 4:11
Romans 4:15

The criticism is:

Sproul imports Augustine’s doctrine of inherited guilt and then must wrestle with implications Augustine himself embraced.

Critique #3: The Moral Character of God

This is probably the most emotionally and philosophically powerful objection.

If:

an infant never consciously sins,
never rejects God,
never suppresses truth,
never commits personal acts of rebellion,

Yet could still be damned, Critics ask:

What meaningful sense of justice remains?

This is where many critics invoke the same concern raised by Juncker regarding determinism:

If moral categories are detached from personal responsibility, words like justice become difficult to understand.

FULLER QUOTE:

“If determinism is true then either God is evil and the author of evil or all talk of good and evil, of praise and blame, of moral responsibility, and of justice is meaningless and incomprehensible with reference to God. That is, if God can cause or determine evil and yet remain good, and if God can punish those who do exactly and only what He has meticulously caused and determined them to do and yet remain just, then we have no idea who God is or what He might or might not do or what Scripture could possibly mean when it calls Him ‘good’ and ‘just.'”

— Günther H. Juncker, “The Dilemma of Theistic Determinism“

The objection becomes:

Eternal punishment without personal rebellion appears inconsistent with ordinary moral reasoning and the biblical portrayal of God’s fairness.

Critique #4: Westminster Creates an Unnecessary Problem

Many critics argue Westminster itself created the issue. The Confession says:

“Elect infants.”

Critics ask why not simply say:

“Infants dying in infancy are saved through Christ”?

Mohler, Warfield, and Spurgeon essentially move in that direction. Sproul, however, insists the Westminster divines intentionally did not teach universal infant salvation. Critics argue:

That commitment to confessional precision ends up preserving a theological possibility that Scripture never explicitly teaches.

Critique #5: Sproul’s Loyalty to Westminster

This critique becomes stronger when paired with Sproul’s own statements:

“The Westminster Confession is the most precise and accurate summary of the content of biblical Christianity ever set forth in a creedal form.”

and

“One of the most important confessions of faith ever penned…”

Because Sproul viewed Westminster so highly, critics argue he was reluctant to depart from its language regarding elect infants even when later Reformed theologians moved toward affirming universal infant salvation.

The Strongest One-Sentence Critique

The strongest critique is probably this:

By affirming unconditional election, inherited guilt, and Westminster’s doctrine of “elect infants,” Sproul leaves open the possibility that some infants are not elect and therefore not saved, a conclusion many critics believe is inconsistent with both the justice and goodness of God as revealed in Scripture.

Exhaustive Determinism:

Sproul affirms that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass (echoing Westminster):

He knows all things that will happen because he ordains everything that does happen. This is crucial to our understanding of God’s omniscience. He does not know what will happen by virtue of exceedingly good guesswork about future events. He knows it with certainty because he has decreed it.

The Westminster Confession avers: “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. . . .”

This statement refers to God’s eternal and immutable decretive will. It applies to everything that happens. Does this mean that everything that happens is the will of God? Yes. Augustine qualified this answer by adding the words, “in a certain sense.” That is, God ordains “in some sense” everything that happens. Nothing that takes place is beyond the scope of his sovereign will. The movement of every molecule, the actions of every plant, the falling of every star, the choices of every volitional creature, all of these are subject to his sovereign will. No maverick molecules run loose in the universe, beyond the control of the Creator. If one such molecule existed, it could be the critical fly in the eternal ointment. As one grain of sand in the kidney of Oliver Cromwell changed the course of English history, so one maverick molecule could destroy every promise God has ever made about the outcome of history.

— What Is Reformed Theology, p. 172

Sproul’s view functionally equivalent to Calvin’s broader decretive will, even if he rejects “equal ultimacy” (symmetrical positive-positive reprobation where God actively works sin in the reprobate the same way He works faith in the elect). Sproul’s inconsistency is “too embarrassed to follow Calvinism to its logical extreme” and pleading ignorance/mystery on hard questions (e.g., the fall of Adam/Eve).

Calvin (Institutes 3.21.5): Explicitly symmetric language —

“some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation… created for one or the other of these ends.”

Sproul: Rejects the symmetrical mode (equal ultimacy / positive-positive) as sub-Calvinist or a caricature that makes God the author of sin. He prefers asymmetric (positive election + negative reprobation/preterition: God passes over the non-elect, leaving them in their sin). Yet critics [like myself] argue this is rhetorical softening — because Sproul still affirms:

God’s decree covers all events.
Reprobation is part of the eternal decree before creation.
The non-elect are chosen to be passed over before birth.

Sproul’s distinctions, while rhetorically softer than Calvin’s, do not ultimately escape the force of double predestination or exhaustive determinism.

… The issue here seems to be how one defines “ordains” or “foreordains.” Calvinists I debate on the internet consistently argue that “ordain” means to decree. I ask them, “Did God decree the Holocaust?” “Did God decree the killing fields of Cambodia?” “Did God decree every act of rape, torture and murder that has ever taken place?” And they say yes! Unbelievable.

What about Calvin on this issue? You deny he was supralapsarian, claiming God’s positive-positive, double-predestination, but excerpts from his writings strongly suggest that was his position. Calvin was quite straightforward on saying God decreed the Fall, writing:

…whence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God?…The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree…God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision.” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7)

That seems to go beyond mere “permission.” He also wrote:

The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny….By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death (Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.21.5).

We also read:

From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely [= idly] 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 will just as he will, whether to good for his mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, 177)

Other famous Calvinists say, for example,

“The Sovereignty of God over all, and his independency, clearly shew, that whatever is done in time is according to his decrees in eternity.” (John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, p. 173)

“As a builder draws his plan before he begins to build, so the great Architect predestined everything before a single creature was called into existence.” (Arthur Pink, The Doctrines of Election and Justification, p.9)

“Surely if God had not willed the fall, He could, and no doubt would, have prevented it; but he did not prevent it: ergo, He willed it. And if He willed it, He certainly decreed it.” (Jerome Zanchius, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, p. 88)

So, by claiming supralapsarianism is “anti-Calvinism,” you are dismissing not only prominent Calvinists from the past, but also Calvin himself. …

(JOHN WAGNER letter to R.C. SPROUL)

Jerry Walls’s observation at this point is apt:

- [T]heological compatibilists [RPT: like Grudem, Sproul, MacArthur, and the like] often make claims and engage in rhetoric that naturally lead people to conclude that God loves them and desires their salvation in ways that are surely misleading to all but those trained in the subtleties of Reformed rhetoric. . . . Such language loses all meaning, not to mention all rhetorical force, when we remember that on compatibilist premises God could determine the impenitent to freely repent, but has chosen instead to determine things in such a way that they freely persist in their sins.

Why No Classical Theist – Let Alone Orthodox Christian – Should Ever Be a Compatibilist (PDF)

God’s refusal to determine the repentance of sinners when it is within his power to do so can be called nothing other than immoral. Damning certain people by withholding something freely given to others is not glorious.

MORE: Is Double Predestination and Active Reprobation, Equal Ultimacy? (good critique of Sproul)

Sproul and Calvin say it is indeed a horrible decree. Sproul’s honesty at this point would be refreshing if his conclusions weren’t so disturbing:

“The nasty problem for the Calvinist [is] . . . . If God can and does choose to insure the salvation of some, why then does he not insure the salvation of all? . . . The only answer I can give to this question is that I don’t know. . . . One thing I do know. If it pleases God to save some and not all, there is nothing wrong with that.” On the contrary, it is the very definition of wrong.” (Fuller Quote)

Here is Sproul’s chapter 58 from his book, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, I will add some emphasis:

PREDESTINATION AND REPROBATION

Every coin has a flip side. There is also a flip side to the doctrine of election. Election refers to only one aspect of the broader question of predestination. The other side of the coin is the question of reprobation.

God declared that He loved Jacob but hated Esau. How are we to understand this reference to divine hatred?

Predestination is double. The only way to avoid the doctrine of double predestination is to either affirm that God predestinates everybody to election or that He predestinates no one to either election or reprobation.

Since the Bible clearly teaches predestination to election and denies universal salvation, we must conclude that predestination is double. It includes both election and reprobation. Double predestination is unavoidable if we take Scripture seriously. What is crucial, however, is how double predestination is understood.

Some have viewed double predestination as a matter of equal causation, where God is equally responsible for causing the reprobate not to believe as He is for causing the elect to believe. We call this a positive-positive view of predestination.

The positive-positive view of predestination teaches that God positively and actively intervenes in the lives of the elect to work grace in their hearts and bring them to faith. Likewise, in the case of the reprobates, He works evil in the hearts of the reprobate and actively prevents them from coming to faith. This view has often been called “hyper-Calvinism” because it goes beyond the view of Calvin, Luther, and the other Reformers.

The Reformed view of double predestination follows a positive-negative schema. In the case of the elect, God intervenes to positively and actively work grace in their souls and bring them to saving faith. He unilaterally regenerates the elect and insures their salvation. In the case of the reprobate He does not work evil in them or prevent them from coming to faith. Rather, He passes over them, leaving them to their own sinful devices. In this view there is no symmetry of divine action. God’s activity is asymmetrical between the elect and the reprobate. There is, however, a kind of equal ultimacy. The reprobate, who are passed over by God, are ultimately doomed, and their damnation is as certain and sure as the ultimate salvation of the elect.

The problem is linked to biblical statements such as those regarding God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. That the Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is beyond dispute. The question remains, how did God harden Pharaoh? Luther argued for a passive rather than an active hardening. That is, God did not create fresh evil in Pharaoh’s heart. There was already enough evil present in Pharaoh’s heart to incline him to resist the will of God at every turn. All God ever has to do to harden anybody is to remove His restraining grace from them and give them over to their own evil impulses. This is precisely what God does to the damned in hell. He abandons them to their own wickedness.

In what sense did God “hate” Esau? Two different explanations are offered to solve this problem. The first explains it by defining hate not as a negative passion directed toward Esau but as simply the absence of redemptive love. That God “loved” Jacob simply means that He made Jacob the recipient of His unmerited grace. He gave Jacob a benefit that Jacob did not deserve. Esau did not receive the same benefit and in that sense was hated by God.

The first explanation sounds a bit like special pleading to get God off the hook for hating somebody. The second explanation gives more strength to the word hate. It says simply that God did in fact hate Esau. Esau was odious in the sight of God. There was nothing in Esau for God to love.

Esau was a vessel fit for destruction and altogether worthy of God’s wrath and holy hatred. Let the reader decide.

Summary

Predestination is double; it has two sides to it.
Some teach that God is equally responsible for election and reprobation. This is characteristic of hyper-Calvinism.
The Reformed view of double predestination reflects a positive-negative schema.
God passively, not actively, hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
God hated Esau in the sense of failing to give him a blessing of grace or in the sense of abhorring him as a vessel fit for destruction.

Biblical passages for reflection:

Exodus 7:1-5
Proverbs 16:4
Romans 9
Ephesians 1:3-6
Jude 1:4

In other words, as The Encyclopedia of The Reformed Faith (page 144), and later the The Westminster Handbook to Reformed Theology (page 87) clearly says:

The Reformed approach to divine freedom is nowhere more apparent than in the doctrine of the eternal decrees: God freely wills the existence and preservation of the created order and freely determines the eternal destiny of all creatures, solely on the ground of God’s goodness and solely for the sake of God’s ultimate glory. In creation and providence, God encounters no barriers to the exercise of God’s will, and in the work of redemption God acts utterly graciously, apart from any merit belonging to the creature.

[….]

Reformed theology has followed an Augustinian paradigm in its understanding of human freedom…

Donald K. McKim and David F. Wright, eds., Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 144,146.

JOHN 6:44

Steve Lemke

R. C. Sproul argued at great length that John 6:44 (“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” [HCSB]) does not refer merely to the necessity that God “woo or entice men to Christ,” such that humans can “resist this wooing” and “refuse the enticement.”¹¹ In philosophical language, Sproul said, this wooing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for salvation “because the wooing does not, in fact, guarantee that we will come to Christ.”¹² Sproul stated that such an interpretation is “incorrect” and “does violence to the text of Scripture.”¹³

Instead, Sproul insists, the term “draw” is “a much more forceful concept than to woo” and means “to compel by irresistible superiority.”¹⁴ However, in discussing irresistible grace, Sproul tells of a student who, hearing a lecture on predestination by John Gerstner, rejected it. When Gerstner asked the student how he defined Calvinism, the student described it as the perspective that “God forces some people to choose Christ and prevents other people from choosing Christ.” Gerstner then said, “If that is what a Calvinist is, then you can be sure that I am not a Calvinist either.”¹⁵What is the difference between compelling “by irresistible superiority” and “forcing” people to do something? Sproul likewise chastised a Presbyterian seminary president for rejecting the Calvinist doctrine that “God brings some people, kicking and screaming against their wills, into the kingdom.” Sproul described this Presbyterian theologian’s view as “a gross misconception of his own church’s theology,” as a “caricature,” and “as far away from Calvinism as one could possibly get.”¹⁶ So which way is it? If God compels people with “irresistible superiority,” in what way is it inaccurate to say that God forces people to choose Christ? The Synod of Dort insisted that such attempts at moral persuasion of unsaved persons was wasted time. The irresistibility of God’s grace (and not merely the use of strong moral persuasion) was precisely what the Synod of Dort rejected and the Remonstrants affirmed. While the Remonstrants affirmed that the compelling grace of God persuades the lost to receive Christ as Lord and Savior, the Synod of Dort insisted that this was not going far enough. Note their explicit denial that a person can “resist” God. The language used in the Synod of Dort describes God’s omnipotence as being such that God can “potently and infallibly bend man’s will to faith and conversion.”¹⁷

Bending the will of a fallible being by an omnipotent Being powerfully and unfailingly is not merely sweet persuasion. It is forcing one to change one’s mind against one’s will. Calvinists often describe their position as monergism as opposed to synergism. In monergism, God works entirely alone, apart from any human role.¹⁸

11. Sproul, Chosen by God, 69–70 (see chap. 1, n. 106).
12. Sproul, 69.
13. Sproul, 69.
14. Sproul, 69.
15. Sproul, 122.
16. Sproul, 122.
17. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 4:143 (III–IV, Rejection of Errors, par. 8).

John Wagner’s Letter to Sproul

… Let me deal next with the issue of your concept and use of the Greek word helkō, commonly translated “draws” in John 6:44. Even if you reject everything else I write here, please accept this one. You really did not get this right. And Calvinists who have read CBG have passed on this incorrect information. You quoted Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and claim because that word means “drag” or “compel” in a physical context such as Acts 16:19 and James 2:6, that therefore it means “drag” or “compel” in the spiritual context of John 6:44.

The evidence indicates it doesn’t. I assume you are aware that a Greek word can have more than one meaning. I looked at Kittel and I see for helkō in regard to John (i.e. 6:44, 12:32) it means, “a beneficent ‘drawing of God…of drawing to oneself in love. This usage is distinctively developed by Jn., perhaps with some influence of Gnosticism. Force or magic may be discounted, but not the supernatural element.” The abridged version of Kittel says, “There is no thought here of force or magic. The term figuratively expresses the supernatural power of the love of God or Christ which goes out to all (12:32) but without which no one can come.”

Did you get that? Both summaries dismiss force, which would be consistent with “drag” or “compel” (though I agree that would be accurate when the word is used in a physical context). Just wondering why you didn’t mention that! Let’s put your position to rest with more citations:

BDAG: has helkō in John 6:44 as “draw, attract.”
Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament by William Mounce says helkō means “to draw mentally and morally, John 6:44; 12:32.”
The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible by Calvinist Spiro Zodhiates: “Helko is used of Jesus on the cross drawing by love, not force” (Jn. 6:44; 12:32).
A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament by Ethelbert W. Bullinger, p. 235: Helko means “to draw, esp. implying a certain attraction mentally or morally; also to draw to a certain point.” This source also mentions surō as a word more consistent with how Calvinists interpret helkō. Surō generally implies a violent dragging. This source defines it as “to draw, drag or trail along as a net; esp. with the notion of force and sometimes with violence.”
The Renaissance New Testament by Randolph Yeager, says about helkō:

It does not necessarily involve coercion, though it does involve persuasion and motivation–John 6:44; 12:32…. [Helkō] does not imply coercion in the two places where it is applied to the elect [the two just-mentioned verses]. Swords, fish nets and political prisoners (John 18:10; 21:6, 11: Acts 16:19) may resist, but the element of resistance is not implicit in the word itself….

Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament by Edward Robinson, say helkō means “to draw by a moral influence, John 6:44, 12:32.”

Please notice that none of these sources indicate that helkō means drag or compel in John 6:44. And your version is especially problematic for John 12:32. Do you believe God drags all men to himself? So it’s kind of funny that the Arminian professor you debated didn’t need to cite some “obscure Greek poet.” The info is clear in many lexicons and similar sources. And by the way, contrary to what you experienced, in the formal 1999 debate I was in against a Calvinist pastor, he repeated your argument on helkō and I nailed him on this point.

And that ties into the issue of the nature of unsaved man. You write, “If a person who is still in the flesh, who is not reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit, can incline or dispose himself to Christ, what good is rebirth?” This is another strawman. Classical Arminians do not believe man can “incline or dispose himself ” all by himself. Arminius wrote strongly of man being depraved and dead and that man needs the heavy convicting and drawing of the Holy Spirit. However, he completely rejected irresistible grace, the biggest oxymoron I can think of. And as for rebirth, that comes after faith, not before.

You slightly acknowledge the idea of prevenient grace and then ask “If so, where” does the Bible teach this concept? Did you even make any effort toward finding an answer for this? Well, John 6:44, which I have proven is not about “dragging,” is one. Furthermore, let’s recall John 16:8, saying that the paraclete “will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment in regard to sin because men do not believe in me.”

The Greek for “convict” is elenchō, and has the connotation of a trial attorney making a legal and moral argument to a jury. In this case, the Holy Spirit conducts that function in the human heart—but not in irresistible manner. Other verses include John 1:9: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” Also, John 12:32, in which Christ says, “When I am lifted up from the earth. I will draw (helkō) all men to myself.” But this is also not irresistible.

Describing prevenient grace, Thomas C. Oden writes:

Prevenient grace antecedes human responsiveness so as to prepare the soul for the effective hearing of the redeeming Word. This preceding grace draws persons closer to God, lessens their blindness to divine remedies, strengthens their will to accept revealed truth, and enables repentance. Only when sinners are assisted by prevenient grace can they begin to yield their hearts to cooperation with subsequent forms of grace….

Does scripture teach the concept of prevenient grace? There is no one passage that lays out a systematic definition of it, however, the concept becomes apparent throughout the overall tenor of scripture. Here are some passages that refer to the different aspects of prevenient grace:

Prevenient Grace Draws:

John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 12:32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself. Prevenient Grace is Universal:

Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. John 1:9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

John 16:7-8 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:

Romans 1:18-19 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

Prevenient Grace Convicts the Non-Believer:

Acts 16:14 One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.

Acts 16:29-30 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Prevenient Grace Works in Combination with the Hearing of the Word:

Acts 2:37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Romans 10:17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

Prevenient Grace is Given Generously:

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Romans 2:4 Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

Acts 17:26-27 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

Prevenient Grace Can be Rejected:

Matt. 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

John 5:34,39,40 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved…You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Acts 7:51 You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!

Heb 4:2 For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.

Heb 10:29 How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Prevenient Grace Results in Saving Grace when it is Accepted:

Ephesians 5:14 For it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

There are actually three very good books on this issue of prevenient grace: The Transforming Power of Grace by Thomas C. Oden, Prevenient Grace by W. Brian Shelton, and Streams of Mercy by J. Gregory Crofford. …

BTW, I prefer pastor Rogers understanding vs a straight Arminian:

Within the Non-Calvinist camp, there are at least two nuanced views on how God allows sinners to respond in faith. The first view is the Arminian view — which says that God’s work of grace (prevenient grace) for all people is needed to enable any sinner to freely choose to respond in faith to the Gospel message. The second view is the Provisionist View — which says that the Gospel message itself [see more below] is God’s work of grace so that when it is preached to all people, any sinner can freely choose to respond in faith. The proclamation of the Gospel is powerfully sufficient enough to bring salvation to those who will believe. While the Arminian and the Provisionist each have a different take on why all humans can respond to God’s offer, these two views both affirm the importance of God’s initiative of grace to invite all sinners to salvation. (from the book Grace For All: Understanding God’s Plan of Salvation).

— Michael R. Cariño

The “More Below”

Grace Enablements

Includes but are not limited to: God’s salvific love for all (John 3:16), God’s manifestation of his power so that all may know he is the Sovereign (Isa 45:21–22) and Creator (Rom 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 of the Holy Spirit (Heb 6:1–6), enlightening of the Son (John 1:9), God’s teaching (John 6:45), God opening minds and hearts (Luke 24:45; Acts 16:14; 26:17–18;), and the power of the gospel (Rom 1:16), without such redemptive grace, no one seeks or comes to God (Rom 3:11).

Because of these gracious provisions and workings of God, man can choose to seek and find God (Jer 29:13; Acts 17:11–12). Moreover, no one can come to God without God calling (Acts 2:39), drawing (John 6:44), and that God is drawing all individuals (John 12:32). The same Greek word for draw, helkuō, is used in both verses. “About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith.” 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.

These are grace enablements in at least three ways; first, they are provided by God’s grace rather than deserved by mankind; second, the necessary components for each and every individual to have a genuine opportunity to believe unto salvation are provided or restored by God; third, they are provided by God without respect to whether the individual will believe or reject, which response God knew in eternity past.

The offer of the gospel is unconditional, but God sovereignly determined to condition the reception of the offer upon grace-enabled faith; therefore, faith is not reflective of a work or virtue of man, but of God’s sovereign plan of salvation by grace through faith (Eph 2:8). This indicates faith is the means to being regenerated and saved, not the reason for being saved. This truth of Scripture does not imply God is held captive to the choice of man, but rather it demonstrates God in eternity coextensively determined to create man with otherwise choice and provide a genuine offer of salvation, which can be accepted by grace-enabled faith or rejected. Additionally, to fulfill this plan, God is not obligated to disseminate the gospel to people he knows have rejected the light he has given them (Rom 1:18–23) and will also reject the gospel; although he may still send the gospel to them.

Sproul continues his thinking is an audio message I have audio of here. In it he says:

Augustine said, I still, in my fallenness, have the ability to choose what I want, but in my heart there’s no desire for God. I have lost any desire for the things of God. If I’m left to myself, the desires of my heart are only wicked continuously. My heart and my soul are dead to the things of God.

I can listen to preaching, I can hear hymns, I can see — I can do all those things and see other people weeping and in ecstasy and all moved by all kinds of religious overtones and consideration.

It leaves me cold.

My heart has calluses on it. It’s recalcitrant.

My neck is stiff.

I’m not moved by anything that has anything to do with God. That’s our natural state. The Bible says that we are dead to the things of God in our fallen condition. Original sin deadens the soul to the things of God.

God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth should not perish, but have everlasting life. And I have people quote that to me, to say man is not fallen to such a degree that he’s lost his power to choose Christ, because that verse says that whosoever believeth will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Now, what does that verse teach us about the extent of the fall of man? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t say who will believe in Christ. All it says is, if you do A, if you believe, you will not perish, and you will have everlasting — you will live forever.

But the question still is left, Why does one person believe and another person not believe?

Augustine said, Now, you’re dead in your sins and trespasses. You don’t have any desire for Christ, and the only way you will ever choose Christ is if God melts your heart, if God softens that stone-cold, recalcitrant heart, if God the Holy Spirit rapes your soul and puts in you a desire for Christ.

That’s what has to happen.

According to Augustine.

And many try to do away with this control of God through what is called “compatibilism”, but as MacArthur notes, this is fictitious in the end:

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)

And then this is John MacArthur:

So free will trumps evil on God’s value scale, so God had to allow for the possibility of evil in order to protect the more highly prized autonomy; and He had to protect autonomy to protect Himself from this bad press, being responsible for evil. Humans then must have self-determination, freedom to act. If God acted as the primary cause and humans only as a secondary cause moved by the primary cause, then God being the primary cause is responsible; and people are not free, and therefore God decided and God compelled and God coerced, and God actually overturned human will. Then God is responsible for all the evil and all the divine judgment and the determination of eternal punishment. This is a God that some people just can’t live with; they’ve got to get Him off the hook.

(See video to add to the above and Grace To You)

This passage is John MacArthur directly describing (and strongly rejecting) the popular “free will defense” theodicy. He uses it to contrast with his own high Calvinist / compatibilist view of God’s sovereignty.

Some AI convo:

Yes. If we define determinism as:

Every human choice is ultimately rendered certain by God’s decree and providential causation, such that no person could ultimately do otherwise than what God ordained,

then John MacArthur is unquestionably on the deterministic side of the spectrum.

The important thing is that MacArthur would almost certainly reject the label “fatalist”, and he would likely prefer “compatibilist” or “Reformed”, but philosophically speaking, compatibilism is a species of determinism. Hendryx is correct on that point.

The key question is:

Does MacArthur believe humans possess libertarian freedom (the ability to choose A or not-A under identical circumstances)?

The answer is no.

The MacArthur Quote You Posted

The fascinating thing about that quotation is that MacArthur is not denying determinism.

He is describing what he believes his opponents fear determinism entails.

Notice the structure:

“If God acted as the primary cause…“

“If God compelled…“

“If God actually overturned human will…“

“Then God is responsible…“

MacArthur is setting up the objection.

The question becomes:

Does MacArthur believe God does these things?

Elsewhere he clearly teaches:

Total inability
Unconditional election
Irresistible grace
Monergistic regeneration
God’s exhaustive sovereignty

Those doctrines require that God determine who will believe.

Compare MacArthur to Sproul

Sproul says:

“The only way you will ever choose Christ is if God melts your heart.”

Then he quotes Augustine:

“God the Holy Spirit rapes your soul and puts in you a desire for Christ.”

Sproul is being more explicit.

MacArthur teaches the same monergistic regeneration, but usually with softer language.

Both affirm:

Fallen man cannot come.
God must first regenerate.
Regeneration guarantees faith.
Those not regenerated remain unable.

That is deterministic in the relevant philosophical sense.

The Real Tell: MacArthur on Election

MacArthur repeatedly teaches:

God chose the elect before creation.
The elect will certainly come.
The non-elect will not come.
Faith itself is a gift from God.

Once those propositions are accepted, the outcome is fixed.

That is why Hendryx says:

“Compatibilism is a form of determinism.”

Because the certainty of the outcome remains intact.

The Important Distinction

A lot of Calvinists hear:

“determinism”

and immediately think:

“atheistic hard determinism.”

But philosophers don’t define determinism that way.

Determinism simply means:

Given the causes and conditions, only one outcome is possible.

MacArthur’s theology appears to satisfy that definition.

Why Your Argument Finds Tension Here

What’s interesting is that the quotation you cited almost sounds like MacArthur is describing your objection:

If God is the primary cause and humans are merely secondary causes moved by Him, then God becomes responsible.

The difficulty is that Calvin, Sproul, Piper, and many Reformed theologians frequently describe God as:

determining wills,
inclining hearts,
ordaining evil events,
governing every detail,
and ensuring outcomes.

So critics ask:

If God determines the desires, determines the will, determines the outcome, and determines who receives regenerating grace, how is He not functioning as the primary determining cause?

That is the exact issue your series has been exploring.

In Short

If by determinism you mean:

Human choices are rendered certain by God’s eternal decree and providential governance, with no ultimate ability to do otherwise,

then:

Calvin = Determinist
Edwards = Determinist
Sproul = Determinist
Piper = Determinist
MacArthur = Determinist
Hendryx explicitly admits compatibilism is determinism

The real debate is not whether these men are deterministic.

The real debate is whether compatibilist determinism can preserve meaningful moral responsibility, justice, and divine goodness.

That’s where the battle shifts from historical theology into philosophy.

This video is long, but has turned into one of my favorites!

Calvinist’s Fatal Flaw: Guilty Babies

Dr. Leighton Flowers plays a clip from Jeremiah Notier, aka The Apologetic Dog, in which he accuses Dr. Flowers of being a “Pelagian” because I do not affirm the concept that all babies are born guilty and deserving of Hell.

GOSPEL COALITION article summary

One-Paragraph Summary

SUMMARY OF THE GOSPEL COALITION ARTICLE: “THE DOCTRINE OF REPROBATION”

The article develops this position in three primary ways.

Scripture Teaches Reprobation

Reprobation Logically Follows From Unconditional Election

This is one of the article’s most important arguments.

The argument is therefore:

Unconditional election → some are chosen → others are not chosen →
their exclusion from saving grace falls within God’s sovereign decree.

God’s sovereignty extends over salvation and human choices

The Two Aspects of Reprobation

The article makes an important distinction between two aspects of reprobation:

Is This Double Predestination?

God’s eternal decree establishes both who will receive saving grace and who will be passed over, with the non-elect ultimately being condemned according to divine justice.

BABIES DESTINED TO HELL

Mind you, I am not the biggest fan of Faith On Fire, but once in a while there is really good stuff. It is 10-minutes long, here is his description:

Christianity is under attack more today than ever, and a big part of that attack comes from Calvinists. Did God create billons of people that God never wanted? Calvinism teaches that God did exactly. Calvinists want people to believe that the God of the Bible has predestined billions of people to hell before they were ever born. They think God has kept any hope of salvation from most people on purpose for His own glory and so God can demonstrate His wrath on them because God ordained and decreed their eternal punishment before the foundation of the world. They believe God reserves salvation for only some preselected elect people who are saved unconditionally by God’s grace.

According to Calvinism, Satan wants all people to join him in hell and the lake of fire, and they think God wants only most people to join Satan in hell and the lake of fire, and Satan doesn’t even have much of anything to do with any of it because it was all meticulously and divinely determined by God before Creation anyway.

TULIP or the 5 points of Calvinism are doctrines of salvation unique and distinctive to Calvinism, not Biblical Christianity. Those Calvinistic doctrines are from Satan and I expose the implications of them and the dangerous errors of that theology.

KINDA THE SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE [added to by RPT]

The Argument

Heaven is infinitely better than earthly life.
If a person dies in infancy and is therefore guaranteed eternal joy with God, then death produces an infinitely greater outcome than continued earthly existence. If that same child survives, however, the outcome is no longer certain. The child may eventually believe and be saved—or reject Christ and be lost.
On the assumption that all infants who die are saved, death in infancy cannot result in hell.
The theological premise establishes a guaranteed positive eternal outcome. The child loses earthly life, but does not lose salvation. Indeed, the child is removed from the possibility of later rejecting Christ and experiencing eternal condemnation.
Continued life therefore introduces a risk that did not previously exist.
The infant who dies remains within the category of guaranteed salvation. The infant who survives eventually becomes a morally accountable person whose eternal destiny, under the same theological system, is no longer universally guaranteed. Poverty, abuse, family circumstances, unbelieving parents, cultural influences, and personal rejection of the gospel can all become factors in that person’s earthly and spiritual history.
This creates an uncomfortable asymmetry.
If universal infant salvation is true, then preserving an infant’s earthly life simultaneously preserves the possibility of that person’s eternal salvation and the possibility of eternal loss. Death removes the second possibility entirely. Thus, within the stated theological premises, earthly life is not an unqualified spiritual benefit; it is also an exposure to the possibility of damnation.
The argument cannot simply appeal to the value of earthly life without addressing the theological premise.
If the decisive consideration is that every human life must be preserved because earthly life is intrinsically preferable to death, then that principle needs to be reconciled with the claim that death in infancy results in guaranteed eternal happiness. Likewise, saying that humans must never interfere with God’s timing does not by itself resolve the underlying question: Why is death unquestionably tragic if the death of an infant guarantees the very heavenly outcome that the believer regards as infinitely superior to earthly existence?
The same reasoning raises a broader question about moral consistency.
If the theological argument works because infants who die are guaranteed salvation, one must explain why that principle stops at infancy. If accountability is the relevant dividing line, then the argument necessarily raises questions about children who have not yet reached that threshold. If the argument does not extend beyond infancy, then the theological basis for making infancy the decisive boundary must be identified.

The central A→B problem is therefore this:

A: Every infant who dies is guaranteed eternal salvation.

B: Continued earthly life introduces the possibility that the child will eventually reject Christ and be eternally lost.

Question: Why should earthly preservation be treated as an unequivocal spiritual good when, according to A and B, preserving earthly life also preserves the possibility of eternal damnation?

The force of the argument is not that abortion is thereby proven morally permissible. Rather, it exposes a tension within the theological premises themselves. If universal infant salvation is asserted, then the believer must explain why preventing the loss of earthly life is necessarily more important than preventing the possibility of eternal loss. Simply saying that earthly life is valuable does not answer the theological question; it changes the question from

“What happens eternally to this child?”

“Is earthly life intrinsically valuable even when it introduces the possibility of eternal damnation?”

JAMES WHITE:

Jonah’s ‘Irresistible Message’ vs. Noah’s ‘Passed Over’ Preaching

Published September 1, 2026September 20, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

TRANSCRIPT 1:

However, according to Reformed determinism, the Ninevites who repented had already been effectually called, unconditionally, before creation. Jonah’s message was therefore not the ultimate cause distinguishing those who repented from those who did not. It was the ordained means, but the decisive cause was God’s prior, irresistible determination. In that sense the story becomes a kind of “cosmic lottery”—not because Calvinists would describe election that way, but because the decisive distinction was settled unconditionally before anyone in Nineveh ever heard Jonah’s voice.

In that framework, God sent a messenger to overcome His own withholding of the grace necessary for those people to respond. Jonah’s preaching did not make repentance possible; it was the predetermined instrument through which God brought the predetermined elect to a predetermined response. The narrative reads like a genuine warning followed by a genuine human response. The deterministic system underneath it says the decisive question had already been answered before Nineveh heard Jonah at all.

Calvary is muted in a similar way by this sixteenth-century dogma. The message of the cross becomes secondary to the “lottery.” The cross may be proclaimed, the gospel may be preached, and sinners may be called to repent and believe—but the decisive question of who will actually receive the grace necessary to do so was, on this view, settled unconditionally before creation.

If that is so, then even Calvary begins to look less like God’s gracious provision genuinely offered to sinners and more like the historical means by which an already-determined number of sinners are brought to an already-determined salvation.

The same pattern appears in the flood. Noah preached, yet God effectually chose only eight and passed over the rest. And according to the determinist framework articulated by Piper, Sproul, Hendryx, and others, even the evil committed by those who were judged falls within God’s exhaustive determination—after which God judges them for those very acts.

The warnings appeared real. The preaching seemed genuine. The repentance was essentially orchestrated. The judgment was redundant. For if the entire outcome had already been unconditionally determined before creation, what could the warning ultimately change? What could the preaching ultimately alter? What could the sinner ultimately do otherwise? Beneath it all, according to the system, the decisive outcomes had already been unconditionally settled.

If theistic determinism is true in the way these Calvinist determinists describe it, then the apparent contingency of those events is illusory—not because Jonah’s preaching was imaginary, or because Nineveh’s repentance did not happen, but because the warning, the response, and the outcome could never have been otherwise. Those who would repent had already been unconditionally selected to repent. Those passed over had been denied the grace necessary to do otherwise.

The biblical drama remains on the stage, but the determinist script has already written every line: every response, every refusal, every act of evil, every repentant person, and every judgment.

It is a sad result when a theological system makes Scripture’s genuine calls to repentance functionally secondary to a decree that, before creation, supposedly determined who would receive the grace necessary to respond—and who would be passed over.

TRANSCRIPT 2:

The Cosmic Lottery

This is a rough outline to a chapter I will add to my digital book as I revamp the already written chapters. This chapter will essentially detail the pitfalls of determinism, whether secular/atheistic, or theistic.

In other words, were Enoch, Lot, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Rahab, Ruth, David, and the rest of the Old Testament saints effectually regenerated by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit so as to decisively cause them to believe the truth God had revealed to them?

If we are going to interpret John 6 as addressing an overarching ontological reality of fallen humanity—namely, that fallen men cannot believe divine truth unless they are first regenerated—then it seems difficult to avoid that conclusion. The Old Testament saints were fallen human beings just as we are. If regeneration was an absolute prerequisite for believing God’s revealed truth, then they too must have been supernaturally regenerated in order to believe.

This leads directly into the Reformed doctrine of effectual calling. The elect whom God effectually calls will respond positively, while those whom He does not effectually call will not. Regeneration is God’s work, and the sinner’s response is ultimately the inevitable result of God’s prior work within the elect.

But this raises the obvious question: Why doesn’t God effectually call everyone?

Romans 9 is commonly brought forward as the answer. Election is God’s sovereign prerogative; He has mercy upon whom He has mercy. His decision does not ultimately rest upon anything found in the individual. The human being therefore has no grounds for questioning God’s sovereign choice any more than he has grounds for questioning why God saved Noah and his family from the Flood while allowing the rest of humanity to perish, or why He chooses to eternally punish sinners.

But notice what happens when this principle is carried through the biblical narrative.

The question is no longer merely whether God saves. The question becomes what ultimately distinguishes the person who responds in faith from the person who does not.

If regeneration and effectual calling are the decisive causes of saving faith, then the sinner’s response cannot ultimately be the distinguishing factor. Those who believe do so because God effectually called them. Those who do not believe do so because they were not effectually called.

The decisive distinction therefore exists prior to the response itself.

And that brings us to Nineveh.

The Ninevites heard Jonah’s preaching, repented, and were spared. The narrative presents Jonah’s proclamation as a genuine warning and the Ninevites’ repentance as a genuine human response. But according to Reformed determinism, those Ninevites who repented had already been effectually called, unconditionally, before creation. Jonah’s message was therefore not the ultimate cause distinguishing those who repented from those who did not. It was the ordained means, but the decisive cause was God’s prior, irresistible determination.

In that sense, the story becomes a kind of “cosmic lottery”—not because Calvinists would describe election that way, but because the decisive distinction was settled unconditionally before anyone in Nineveh ever heard Jonah’s voice.

God sent a messenger to overcome His own withholding of the grace necessary for those people to respond. Jonah’s preaching did not make repentance possible; it was the predetermined instrument through which God brought the predetermined elect to a predetermined response.

The narrative reads like a genuine warning followed by a genuine human response. The deterministic system underneath it says that the decisive question had already been answered before Nineveh heard Jonah at all.

And this is precisely where the problem becomes difficult to escape.

If God could have effectually called the others but chose not to, then the difference between those who repented and those who did not ultimately lies not in the message, not in the warning, and not in something the individuals themselves did. It lies in God’s unconditional determination concerning them.

The same logic reaches all the way to Calvary.

The cross remains absolutely necessary within the system. The preaching of the gospel remains necessary. Faith remains necessary. Repentance remains necessary. But none of these, in themselves, effect the decisive stirring of the soul that results in saving faith. The Word may be preached, the warning may be heard, and the sinner may be commanded to repent and believe, but the decisive work must first occur through regeneration. The irresistible and effectual work of God must make the person spiritually alive before that person can respond savingly.

And this creates a striking tension with the way Scripture portrays the power of God’s Word. The Word is described as living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Yet within the deterministic framework, the preached Word itself cannot ultimately account for why one sinner responds while another does not. The same gospel may be heard by two equally fallen sinners, yet only one responds because only one has first been effectually regenerated.

The decisive distinction, therefore, is not ultimately found in the Word that both heard, nor in the warning that both received, nor in the command to repent that confronted both of them. It is found in the prior work of God within one and not the other.

The gospel is therefore proclaimed universally, but the grace that makes the proclamation effectual is distributed according to an unconditional decree. The Word is preached to all, but only those whom God has first regenerated are given the ability to respond savingly.

The result is that the historical preaching of the Word becomes the ordained instrument through which a prior decree is executed. The message appears to confront the sinner with a genuine possibility, yet the decisive question of whether that message will produce saving faith has already been settled before the sinner ever hears it.

The Word speaks in time.

The decree settled the response before time.

And this brings us to Noah.

Noah certainly was not the worst preacher in history. In fact, within the biblical account, his preaching was accompanied by a remarkable testimony of righteousness and obedience. Yet if the Reformed doctrine of effectual calling is correct, Noah’s lack of converts cannot ultimately be attributed to a failure of preaching technique, persuasion, clarity, or faithfulness.

The root cause of the people’s rejection was not ultimately found in Noah’s preaching, nor even in their own independent response to it. According to the determinist framework, God had determined not to effectually call them and not to grant them the regenerating grace necessary to respond positively to Noah’s message.

Conversely, the reason Noah and his family believed and were preserved was ultimately because God had determined to save them and effectually brought about the response necessary to that end. Thus, the decisive distinction between those who accepted God’s warning and those who rejected it was established by God’s prior determination.

In that sense, Noah was essentially 100 percent effective in accomplishing the purpose God had actually decreed for his preaching. Those whom God determined to save were saved; those whom He determined to pass over remained in their unbelief. Noah’s preaching did not fail to accomplish God’s predetermined purpose. Rather, within the system, the ultimate success or failure of his preaching was determined by God’s prior decision concerning the people who heard it.

This means that the people who perished were not ultimately lost because Noah’s message was insufficiently powerful. They were lost because, according to the doctrine, God had not determined to give them the effectual grace that would cause them to accept the message. The same preaching that was ordained to produce faith in the elect was ordained to leave the non-elect in their unbelief.

And that exposes the same difficulty we encountered with Nineveh. If God alone determines who receives the grace necessary to respond, then the apparent success or failure of the preacher is ultimately secondary. Jonah could preach and Nineveh could repent because God had determined to effectually call those Ninevites. Noah could preach for years and see no mass repentance because God had not determined to effectually call the people who perished.

The warnings appeared real. The preaching seemed genuine. The repentance was essentially orchestrated. The judgment was redundant—not in the sense that the ordained means had no purpose, but in the sense that the ultimate outcome could not possibly have been altered by the response of those involved.

For if the entire outcome had already been unconditionally determined before creation, what could the warning ultimately change?

What could the preaching ultimately alter?

What could the sinner ultimately do otherwise?

The Reformed answer is that God uses means to accomplish His predetermined ends. The warning accomplishes its predetermined purpose. The preaching accomplishes its predetermined purpose. The repentance accomplishes its predetermined purpose. The judgment accomplishes its predetermined purpose.

But that answer only reinforces the underlying problem.

Everything that happens is the means God predetermined to bring about what He had already predetermined would happen.

If theistic determinism is true in the way these Calvinist determinists describe it, then the apparent contingency of these events is ultimately illusory—not because Jonah’s preaching was imaginary, or because Nineveh’s repentance did not happen, or because Noah’s preaching was meaningless, but because the decisive outcomes could never have been otherwise.

Those who would repent had already been unconditionally selected to repent.

Those passed over had been denied the grace necessary to do otherwise.

The biblical drama remains on the stage, but the determinist script has already written every line: every response, every refusal, every act of evil, every repentant person, and every judgment.

And this brings us back to the original problem.

If regeneration is required before a fallen person can believe God’s revealed truth, and if regeneration is granted only to those unconditionally elected by God, then the ultimate distinction between the believer and the unbeliever is not found in the response to God’s revelation. It is found in the prior decree that determines who will receive the grace necessary to respond.

That makes Jonah’s warning genuine—but not genuinely decisive.

It makes Nineveh’s repentance real—but predetermined.

It makes Noah’s preaching real—but unable to alter the predetermined division between those saved and those destroyed.

And it makes the proclamation of the gospel universal in its announcement while the saving grace necessary to respond remains particular in its distribution.

The sinner is commanded to repent, but whether he receives the grace necessary to repent has already been unconditionally decided.

He is commanded to believe, but whether he receives the grace necessary to believe has already been unconditionally decided.

He hears the gospel, but the decisive question of whether the gospel will result in faith has already been answered.

That is the theological mechanism behind what I am calling the “Cosmic Lottery.”

Not chance.

Not randomness.

Not an accusation that Calvinists believe salvation is arbitrary in the ordinary sense of the word.

Rather, it is the unavoidable appearance produced when the decisive distinction between two equally fallen people is located in an unconditional divine choice made before either person existed.

One hears and believes.

Another hears and does not believe.

But beneath both responses, the determinist says, God had already decided who would receive the effectual grace that guarantees the first response and who would be passed over.

The outcome therefore appears to unfold through history, but the decisive distinction was established before history began.

The warning appears to open a genuine possibility.

The preaching appears to confront the hearer with a genuine choice.

The gospel appears to summon the sinner to a genuine response.

Yet beneath the system, the outcome has already been settled.

The biblical drama unfolds in time.

The decree settled it before time.

The problem, then, is not that Jonah preached so well that Nineveh repented, or that Noah somehow preached poorly so that those who heard him failed to respond. Nor is the problem that God sovereignly saves; we all believe that. The root of the problem is what happens when that sovereignty is defined as an unconditional determination that decisively causes one person to respond while withholding the grace necessary for another to do so.

Again, the problem is the claim that God’s sovereign determination has already rendered the ultimate human response certain before the person ever encounters the revealed truth.

And if that is the case, then the question is unavoidable:

When Jonah stood outside Nineveh and cried, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” was Nineveh genuinely being called to repent—or was Jonah merely announcing the historical means by which a predetermined group of elect Ninevites would inevitably respond?

That is the question the doctrine must answer.

And that is where the Cosmic Lottery begins.

Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will

Published August 31, 2026September 7, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted December 2025

The audio at the start from Jeff Durbin is bad… so one has to put up with it a little when the initial audio is played. But the same arguments against atheistic determinism can be used against Augustinian/Calvinistic [theistic] determinism:

Dr. Braxton Hunter, President of Trinity Seminary and host of Trinity Radio, joins Dr. Flowers to talk about how the main arguments against naturalistic determinism can apply against theistic determinism, as held by Compatibilistic Calvinists. They demonstrate this by engaging a clip from Apologia Studios with Jeff Durbin which references a quote from Calvinistic apologist, Greg Bahnsen.

Justin Brierley drives this point home in his article:

… Atheist Determinism

Calvinistic Christians have more in common with many atheists than they may realize. Determinism has also become a very popular philosophy among their godless counterparts. For some time, prominent voices in atheist circles have also been announcing that the notion of free will is past its sellby date.

Popular atheist author Sam Harris wrote a book titled Free will (Free Press) which, drawing on research in neuroscience, argued that our innate sense of freedom is merely an illusion foisted on us by nature. None of us is actually in control of what we do. So far so Calvinist. But rather than believing God has predestined us, atheists like Harris say the universe is responsible.

Atheist determinism springs from a ‘materialist’ worldview. All that exists is the ‘material’ stuff of the universe. Everything about us and the world we live in can ultimately be explained by the physics of atoms, electrons, quarks and neutrons, interacting according to the predictable regularity of natural laws.

Think of it like this: the skill of the snooker player is in predicting as accurately as possible how the balls will ricochet off each other in order to find the pockets on the table. But, theoretically, if a snooker player lined up their very first shot with perfect precision and perfect force, they could clear the table in one shot. The universe is like that, but on a much bigger scale.

Every single physical event, from the movements of electrons to the orbits of the planets, follows predictable laws of cause and effect. Therefore, the way the universe is now is a direct result of the way it was when it first began. If you rewound the clock by 13 billion years to the exact same physical state of affairs, things would roll out in exactly the same way they already have.

But, in such a universe, the idea that we have any measure of free will evaporates. Every aspect of our existence was predestined by a cosmos blindly following the laws of cause and effect. …

READ IT ALL: “Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will“

You cannot have LOVE with people made into dolls with a pull string that say, “I love you.” This is evidence that Calvinists/”Reformed” make Calvary useless.

Here is a favored adapted combination of mine:

One of the most intriguing aspects mentioned by Ravi Zacharias of a lecture he attended entitled “Determinism – Is Man a Slave or the Master of His Fate,” given by Stephen Hawking, who is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Newton’s chair, was this admission by Dr. Hawking’s, was Hawking’s admission that if “we are the random products of chance, and hence, not free, or whether God had designed these laws within which we are free.”^[1] In other words, do we have the ability to make choices, or do we simply follow a chemical reaction induced by millions of mutational collisions of free atoms? Michael Polyni mentions that this “reduction of the world to its atomic elements acting blindly in terms of equilibrations of forces,” a belief that has prevailed “since the birth of modern science, has made any sort of teleological view of the cosmos seem unscientific…. [to] the contemporary mind.”^[2]

[1] Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 118, 119.

[2] Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago, IL: Chicago university Press, 1977), 162.

This is one of the biggest reasons I [about half-a-year-ago] have rejected the 5-Points of Calvinism. Which is, determinism. I have written, posted, and debated this with atheists for years on the WWW., and when I saw that people like Al Mohler refute the atheist versions of this but does not apply the same thinking to his position — my apologetic bug was brought alive. Here is the video that started this rabbit trail:

Here is the full Al Mohler article: “So . . . Why Did I Write This? The Delusion of Determinism”

The subversion of moral responsibility is one of the most significant developments of recent decades. Though this subversion was originally philosophical, more recent efforts have been based in biology and psychology. Various theorists have argued that our decisions and actions are determined by genetics, environmental factors, or other forces. Now, Scientific American is out with a report on a study linking determinism and moral responsibility.

The diverse theories of determinism propose that our choices and decisions are not an exercise of the will, but simply the inevitable outcome of factors outside our control. As Scientific American explains, determinists argue that “everything that happens is determined by what happened before — our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action.”

In other words, free will doesn’t exist. Used in this sense, free will means the exercise of authentic moral choice and agency. We choose to take one action rather than the other, and must then take responsibility for that choice.

This link between moral choice and moral responsibility is virtually instinctive to humans. As a matter of fact, it is basic to our understanding of what it means to be human. We hold each other responsible for actions and choices. But if all of our choices are illusory — and everything is merely the “inevitable consequence” of something beyond our control, moral responsibility is an exercise in delusion.

Scientific American reports on a study performed by psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler. The psychologists found that individuals who were told that their moral choices were determined, rather than free, were also more likely to cheat on an experimental examination.

As Shaun Nichols reports:

The Western conception idea of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility, guilt for misdeads and pride in accomplishment. We hold ourselves responsible precisely when we think that our actions come from free will. In this light, it’s not surprising that people behave less morally as they become skeptical of free will. Further, the Vohs and Schooler result fits with the idea that people will behave less responsibly if they regard their actions as beyond their control. If I think that there’s no point in trying to be good, then I’m less likely to try.

Even if giving up on free will does have these deleterious effects, one might wonder how far they go. One question is whether the effects extend across the moral domain. Cheating in a psychology experiment doesn’t seem too terrible. Presumably the experiment didn’t also lead to a rash of criminal activity among those who read the anti-free will passage. Our moral revulsion at killing and hurting others is likely too strong to be dismantled by reflections about determinism. It might well turn out that other kinds of immoral behavior, like cheating in school, would be affected by the rejection of free will, however.

There are limitations to this kind of research, of course, but the report is both revealing and unsurprising. If we are not responsible for our actions, they why would people do the right thing? The most immediate result of such thinking is the subversion of moral accountability.

Of course, this pattern of thought also renders human existence irrational. How can we understand ourselves, our children, our spouses, our friends, or our neighbors if moral responsibility is undermined by determinism. Our legal system would completely collapse, as would the entire experience of relating to other human beings.

Shaun Nichols explains that “the Western conception of free will seems bound up with our sense of moral responsibility.” That “Western conception” is a product of the Christian inheritance and the biblical worldview. The Bible clearly presents human beings as morally responsible. Christians of virtually all theological traditions — including Reformed theology, Arminianism, and Catholicism — affirm moral and spiritual responsibility and the authenticity of the experience of choice.

As a matter of fact, this capacity and accountability is rooted in the biblical concept of the imago Dei — the image of God. Our Creator made us as moral creatures and planted within us the capacity of conscience. All this refutes the concept of moral determinism.

In its most modern forms, determinism is a product of naturalism — the belief that everything must be explained in purely natural terms. Naturalism explains the human mind (including the experience of moral choice) as a matter of chemical reactions in the brain, and nothing more.

Determinism is implied by naturalism and relieves human beings of moral responsibility. There is no moral revolt against the Creator, no Fall, and no need for the Gospel. This subversion of moral responsibility is both a delusion and a trap. And, as the Scientific American report indicates, even those who say they believe in moral determinism are unable to live consistently with this assumption. We know we are responsible.

SOME QUOTES CONNECTING THIS IDEA MORE

ATHEISTS:

THEISTS:

If Mohler applies that to his own theological determinism, he would have to reject it.

RIGHT CLICK AND “OPEN LINK IN NEW TAB” TO GET BIGGEST VERSION

THERE IS NO GOSPEL IN TULIP

In other words, a person accepts Christ’s death and Resurrection as secondary to being ELECTED.

Here is more on this via this excerpt of an article and short video:

ARMINIAN PERSPECTIVE:

Calvinist: “That is why Christ said that you must be born again in order to even see the kingdom of God. The new nature must come before faith. God making us willing is not mind control in the sense that you describe it but giving us a new nature and a new mind. Of course the analogy isn’t perfect but it does illustrate the fact that we can be made to love without it being against our will.”

Me: “No it doesn’t. If we were God haters that wanted nothing to do with Christ prior to His irresistible act of “giving us a new heart” that “makes us willing”, then it was certainly “against our will” because our will was to hate and reject God prior to His irresistible working in us. It would be like a man meeting a girl at a bar and the girl doesn’t like him and wants nothing to do with him. In fact, she finds him repulsive. So the man slips a pill in her drink that removes her inhibitions and causes her to begin to find him attractive, even to the point of “making her willing” to sleep with him. Now if this incident was brought before the court, would the court say that the man is not liable for violating the woman against her will, since the pill he put in her drink “made her willing”? Of course not. Nobody would say that she freely chose to be with the man under such circumstances, and no one would say that her will was not violated.”

“As distasteful as this illustration might be, it illustrates the exact same principle behind your claims that while God “makes us willing” this making us willing by “giving us a new heart” is not a violation of the person’s will. Instead of dropping a pill into our drink, God drops a “new heart” into our God hating chest. The only difference would be that in your view of how God works, the “effects” of the “drug” would never wear off. But that doesn’t change the fact that a person’s will has been obviously violated in the process.”

“It really is pretty simple. If God’s working faith into us is not resistible, but irresistible, then it certainly violates freedom and the will. That is so obvious, it shouldn’t even need to be pointed out. If you want to say that God irresistibly brings sinners to faith and love and devotion to Him (by irresistibly removing their “hate God heart” and putting in a “love God heart”) because you think the Bible teaches that, then fine. But trying to then claim that God does this in such a way that we freely come to him in such a way that our wills are not violated is clearly incoherent. You can’t have it both ways. Sorry.”

Dr. Leighton Flowers talk about martyrs who stood against the Calvinists of their day and what happened to them.

Calvinist’s Hiding Their Dreadful Decree Behind the Good News

Published August 27, 2026August 28, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

This video examines why the doctrine of Calvinistic predestination—particularly double predestination and reprobation—has repeatedly produced intense disagreement within the Christian church. The discussion asks an important historical question: if these doctrines were foundational teachings of the apostles and earliest Christians, why do we find so little evidence of the kind of intense intra-Christian controversy surrounding them before Augustine?

The video looks particularly at Augustine’s role in the development of theological determinism, including his earlier association with Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, and the later development of his views on predestination. It also considers the historical evidence concerning the early church fathers and their opposition to deterministic ideas associated with Gnosticism and other movements.

The discussion then turns to the modern Calvinist debate and the striking divisions that arise when these doctrines are introduced into churches. Are these disagreements simply evidence that the doctrines are difficult truths that Christians must accept by faith, or do they indicate that something fundamentally different from the teaching of the earliest church has been introduced? The video also examines the problem of “double-speak”—the attempt to hold apparently contradictory propositions together by appealing to God’s mysterious or supposedly different logic.

Ultimately, the video asks viewers to consider a larger question: If Calvinistic determinism was truly a foundational doctrine of Christianity, why is its historical emergence and subsequent divisiveness so pronounced? Rather than simply telling the viewer what to believe, the goal is to examine the historical and theological claims and encourage the viewer to “report, you decide.”

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE PDF

2) The earliest Christian scholars did not teach “Calvinistic” doctrines.

If Jesus really was teaching TULIP theology so clearly in John chapter 6, as White likes to emphasize, why on earth don’t we see any of these theological concepts expounded upon or even mentioned in the earliest Christian writings? Instead, we have a preponderance of teachings from the early church, which rebut the conclusions that Calvinists have drawn from this and other passages. A widely-accepted notion among biblical scholars and historians is that doctrines obtained from those who were present at the time they were created are more likely to be accurate. In contrast, the likelihood of errors in doctrine increases as one moves further away from the original sources.

Irenaeus (ca. 130-202) was a martyr and influential figure in the early development of Christian theology. He was a student of Poly-carp, who was a disciple of John. In 180 AD, Irenaeus wrote a book called “Against Heresies,” specifically addressing ideas that would later be associated with Calvinistic Theology. These “heresies” being addressed denied free will, as can be seen in the following summaries:

Men are possessed of free will and endowed with the faculty of making a choice. It is not true, therefore, that some are by nature good and others bad.

This expression [of our Lord], How often would I have gathered your children together, and you would not, Matthew 23:37 set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests (ad utendum senten-tia) of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will [towards us] is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. And in man, as well as in angels, He has placed the power of choice (for angels are rational beings) so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. On the other hand, they who have not obeyed shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment: for God did kindly bestow on them what was good, but they themselves did not diligently keep it, nor deem it something precious, but poured contempt upon His super-eminent goodness. Rejecting therefore the good, and as it were spuing it out, they shall all deservedly incur the just judgment of God, which also the Apostle Paul testifies in his Epistle to the Romans, where he says, But do you despise the riches of His goodness, and patience, and long-suffering, being ignorant that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store to yourself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. But glory and honour, he says, to everyone that does good. God, therefore, has given that which is good, as the apostle tells us in this Epistle, and they who work it shall receive glory and honour, because they have done that which is good when they had it in their power not to do it; but those who do it not shall receive the just judgment of God, because they did not work good when they had it in their power so to do.

But if some had been made by nature bad, and others good, these latter would not be deserving of praise for being good, for such were they created; nor would the former be reprehensible, for thus they were made [originally]. But since all men are of the same nature, able both to hold fast and to do what is good; and, on the other hand, having also the power to cast it from them and not to do it — some do justly receive praise even among men who are under the control of good laws (and much more from God), and obtain deserved testimony of their choice of good in general, and of persevering therein; but the others are blamed, and receive a just condemnation, because of their rejection of what is fair and good. And therefore the prophets used to exhort men to what was good, to act justly and to work righteousness, as I have so largely demonstrated, because it is in our power so to do, and because by excessive negligence we might become forgetful, and thus stand in need of that good counsel which the good God has given us to know by means of the prophets.⁴³

Justin Martyr, who lived from c. 100/114AD to c. 162/168 AD was a prominent early Christian apologist who defended the faith. He courageously faced martyrdom through beheading. His writings are significant as they are the earliest surviving examples of substantial Christian apologia. He taught:

Man acts by his own free will and not by fate. We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, chastisements, and rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Otherwise, if all things happen by fate, then nothing is in our own power, for if it be predestined that one man be good and another man evil, then the first is not deserving of praise or the other to be blamed. Unless humans have the power to avoid evil and choose good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions-whatever they may be….

For neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good but was merely created for that end. Likewise, if a man were evil, he would not deserve punishment since he was not evil of himself, being unable to do anything else than what he was made for.

But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully unless we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably wicked, but not because God had created them so.⁴⁴

Clement of Alexandria, known to have lived from c. 150 to c. 215 AD, was an important figure in early Christianity. He was an influential Christian theologian and philosopher who sought to integrate Greek philosophy with Christian teachings. Despite living in turbulent times, Clement remained devoted to defending and promoting the Christian faith. His written works, which have survived to this day, provide valuable insights into the early development of Christian thought, making Clement of Alexandria a notable figure in early Christian apologetics. He wrote:

A man by himself working and toiling at freedom from sinful desires achieves nothing. But if he plainly shows himself to be very eager and earnest about this, he attains it by the addition of the power of God. God works together with willing souls. But if the person abandons his eagerness, the spirit of God is also restrained. To save the unwilling is the act of one using compulsion, but to save the willing, that of one showing grace.

Neither praise nor condemnation, neither rewards nor punishments, are right if the soul does not have the power of choice and avoidance if evil is involuntary.

I could have provided more examples from early church leaders, but the point has been established. To address any concerns about selectively quoting to support my view, let’s consider the viewpoints of unbiased sources like Loraine Boettner, a well-known Calvinist, on the beliefs of early church leaders. Boettner acknowledges that the early church fathers did not endorse the doctrine of predestination:

It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century… They, of course, taught that salvation was through Christ, yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet alongside those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two, they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination… They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a cooperation between grace and free will…⁴⁵

Regarding what we now call the doctrine of predestination, Boettner went on to say, “This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine…” Augustine lived from 354 – 430 A.D., well after the church fathers quoted above. However, Boett-ner was not alone in his findings. In 1882, James Morrison wrote in The Extent of Atonement about an English Bishop, John Davenant (1572-1641), who was a Calvinist present at the Synod of Dort in 1618. Bishop Davenant wrote:

It may be truly said before Augustine and Pelagius that there was no question concerning the death of Christ, whether it was to be extended to all mankind or to be confined only to the elect. For the Fathers…not a word (that I know of) occurs among them of the exclusion of any persons by the decree of God. They agree that it is actually beneficial to those only who believe, yet everywhere confess that Christ died on behalf of all mankind…

Augustine died in AD 429, and up to his time, at least, there is not the slightest evidence that any Christian ever dreamed of a propitiation for the elect alone. Even after him, the doctrine of limited propitiation was but slowly propagated, and for long but partially received.⁴⁶

Herman Bavinck, another well-respected Calvinistic scholar, came to virtually the same conclusion:

In the early church, at a time when it had to contend with pagan fatalism and gnostic naturalism, its representatives focused exclusively on the moral nature, freedom, and responsibility of humans and could not do justice, therefore, to the teaching of Scripture concerning the counsel of God. Though humans had been more or less corrupted by sin, they remained free and were able to accept the proffered grace of God. The church’s teaching did not include a doctrine of absolute predestination and irresistible grace.⁴⁷

In their book titled “Why I Am Not An Arminian,” two Calvinistic professors of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary, Robert Peterson and Michael Williams, reflect on the same basic historical fact:

The Semi-Pelagians were convinced that Augustine’s monergistic emphasis upon salvation by grace alone represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church. And a survey of the thoughts of the apostolic fathers shows that the argument is valid… In comparison to Augustine’s monergistic doctrine of grace, the teachings of the apostolic fathers tended toward a synergistic view of redemption.⁴⁸

Louis Berkhof, who was both President of Calvin Seminary and a professor of Systematic Theology, affirms this “assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledge by all well versed in the matter:”

Predestination does not form an important subject of discussion in history until the time of Augustine. Earlier Church Fathers allude to it, but do not as yet seem to have a very clear conception of it. On the whole, they regard it as the prescience of God with reference to human deeds, on the basis of which He determines their future destiny… Their representations are naturally rather indefinite, imperfect, incomplete, and sometimes even erroneous and self-contradictory. Says Kahnis: “It stands as an assured fact, a fact knowing no exceptions, and acknowledged by all well versed in the matter, that all of the pre-Augustinian Fathers taught that in the appropriation of salvation, there is a co-working of freedom and grace.” ⁴⁹

Berkhof goes on to admit that “they [the early church scholars] do not hold to an entire corruption of the human will, and consequently adhere to the synergistic theory of regeneration…” In other words, he admits there were no “monergists” before Augustine.⁵⁰

John Calvin himself even admitted that Augustine was the only early source he could find to validate his views:

Moreover, although the Greek Fathers, above others, and especially Chrysostom, have exceeded due bounds in extolling the powers of the human will, yet all ancient theologians, with the exception of Augustine, are so confused, vacillating, and contradictory on this subject, that no certainty can be obtained from their writings.⁵¹

I suspect that the reason Calvin singled out his frustration with John Chrysostom (347-407) is probably because Chrysostom linked the Calvinistic interpretation of passages like John 6:44 to their Gnostic origin when he wrote:

No man can come unto Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw Him. The Manichaeans spring upon these words, saying that nothing lies in our own power, yet the expression shows that we are masters of our will.⁵²

Augustine was a Manichaean for about a decade of his life before converting to Christianity, so many scholars throughout the ages have suspected that this might have been one significant influence explaining why Augustine’s teachings “represented a significant departure from the traditional teaching of the church,” as acknowledged by “all well versed in the matter.”⁵³

And we cannot downplay the amount of influence Augustine had, especially on the Calvinistic form of Christianity. R.C. Sproul, a highly esteemed Calvinistic theologian, wrote:

It has been said that all of Western theology is a footnote to the work of Augustine. This is because no other writer, with the exception of the biblical authors, has had more influence on Christendom. When Martin Luther and John Calvin were accused of teaching new doctrine, they pointed to Augustine as an example of one who had taught the things they were teaching.⁵⁴

On this point, James Leo Garrett, a prominent Baptist theologian and scholar, aptly noted:

From Augustine of Hippo to the twentieth century, Western Christianity has tended to interpret the doctrine of election from the perspective of and with regard to individual human beings. During those same centuries the doctrine has been far less emphasized and seldom ever controversial in Eastern Orthodoxy. Is it possible that Augustine and later Calvin, with the help of many others, contributed to a hyper-individualization of this doctrine that was hardly warranted by Romans 9-11, Eph. 1, and I Peter 2? Is it not true that the major emphasis in both testaments falls upon an elect people—Israel (OT) and disciples or church (NT)?⁵⁵

Considering that even Calvinists discourage the teaching of TULIP to skeptical non-believers and the fact that the Christian church in its first 400 years did not interpret the Bible from a Calvinistic perspective, it seems highly improbable that Jesus intended to introduce this complex and controversial soteriological systematic to a group of grumbling unbelieving Israelites who were superficial followers looking for a free meal.

Leighton C. Flowers, Drawn by Jesus: A Biblical Defense of God’s Provision for All and a Rebuttal of James White’s Book “Drawn by the Father” on John 6:35–45 (Trinity Academic Press, 2024), 63–77.

FOOTNOTES:

40. Calvinism is generally known by its unwavering commitment to the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) most popularly represented by the acronym “TULIP” (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistiblegrace, and Perseverance of the saints), also referenced as “five points.” Some Calvinists call themselves “four pointers” (Amyrauldians), because they reject Limited atonement. Others, like White, add additional letters, such as “S” for “sovereignty” which is redefined to mean “theistic determinism,” making the acronym “STULIP.”

41. In a casual poll on X, I posed the question to Calvinists: “Should you teach TULIP to a crowd of unbelievers.” The overwhelming response was, no. Here are a few replies that best represent the consensus: “No. Secondary matters are secondary.” “No need to get into the deeper things of God, given that they reject milk.” “This is why we sit down and talk to people and find out who they are and where they are. Any system of doctrine is a guard rail. This is not be to preached or evangelized.”

42. On a Dividing Line program titled “Radio Free Geneva: Atheists, William Lane Craig, Warren McGrew,” White responded to a discussion between an Atheist (PineCreekDoug) and a Calvinistic Christian (Derek Murrell) saying, “…there’s no reason to be discussing the sovereign grace of God and things like that with someone who just doesn’t even believe…” accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026]

43. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT)

44 Justin Martyr, The First Apology (chapter 43), accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT).

45. Loraine Boettner, Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (MONERGISM)

46. David Allen, The Synod of Dort and the Extent of the Atonement, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (DR. DAVID ALLEN)

47. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, vol. 2, God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 348. He references Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian among the ante-Nicene fathers, and John of Damascus among the later Eastern teachers.

48. Robert Peterson and Michael Williams, Why I Am Not an Arminian (IVP, 2004) 36.

49. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 1932) 130.

50. The categories of “monergism” versus “synergism” were created by Calvinists in order to reframe the discussion over the role of God and man in the process of salvation which is based on a fallacy of conflation. More on this topic can be found here: “Calvinism’s Conflation” (SOTO 101); and “Calvinism’s Conflation | Flowers and Tozer” (RELIGIO-POLITICAL TALK)

51. John Calvin, Institutes, book 2, chapter 2, section 4

52. John Chrysostom, Homily 46 on the Gospel of John, accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (NEW ADVENT)

53. For more on this topic see: Ken Wilson, The Foundation of Augustinian-Calvinism (Mohr Siebeck, 2019).

54. Quote taken from a recommendation for The Works of Saint Augustine: The Confessions. Accessed online [by RPT 8/27/2026] (THE OLD GUYS)

55. James Leo Garrett Jr., Systematic Theology: Biblical Historical, and Evangelical, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 500

This stuff is striking a chord with me. Why, part of this year+ journey I left a church where this “two face” theology is preached from the pulpit and something different is discussed behind doors (adult classes and men’s and women’s groups). My past pastor said this:

“Make a choice. Choose this day. In fact, you can choose one of the… He’s not saying that he’s happy if you choose the pagan gods, but he says, in fact, pick one of the pagan gods. Do you know that something that God is extremely kind and gracious to us and that he gave us free will? Did you know that? He didn’t force a relationship on us. He gave us free will. Do you remember what he gave Adam and Eve? Free will. You can make a choice. I’m not gonna force it. Hey, you choose, yeah, you, make the choice.”

When I asked an elder if this pastor really believed this statement he made regarding free will from the pulpit, I got an honest answer of “No.” And when discussing the issue the night before I turned in my letter of leaving to the church, this was said via another pastor:

Interestingly enough Josh McDowell’s warning rang very true to me. He writes:

A feature of some cultic groups is that they say one thing publicly but internally believe something totally different. Many organizations call themselves Christians when in fact they deny the fundamentals of the faith. . . . One therefore must be on the alert for the organizations that advertise themselves as “Christians” but whose internal teachings disagree with Scripture.

And part of the reason for this “secrecy” is that is is not good news, it is a “dreadful decree”.

Although we cannot know the true intentions of John Calvin’s pursuit in evangelism, for several reasons it seems unlikely that he aimed only to proclaim salvation in Christ. First, his theological view clearly makes evangelism ultimately useless. Second, cult leaders usually seek their own desires, as opposed to the desires of God as revealed in Scripture. Third, John Calvin knew that his missionaries were not spreading good news to anyone whom God would not save. In fact, as Reformation historian Diarmaid MacCulloch writes, “Calvin was perfectly aware that the determinism of predestination was ‘dreadful indeed’ to humanity.”^[22]* In fact, his missionaries were spreading nothing but bad news to almost all of those who were supposedly not of the elect. According to MacCulloch, “The most discordant noises came from Basel, where one anonymous pamphlet with bitter sarcasm described the Genevan Church as proclaiming ‘its good news with flames.”^[23]

[….]

(4) Why Calvinism’s gospel and other cult theologies are dishonestly presented

When I share the gospel message, either from the pulpit or one-on-one, I have nothing to hide or water down about my beliefs and theology. This may sound very basic, but it must be noted. If I were a people pleaser, I would be tempted to overlook those parts of my theology that might offend a potential believer. Certain aspects of the gospel’s good news, like “personal sin” and “divine judgment,” are not merely a part of understanding one’s need for God’s grace but are imperative to receiving it. Thus, although the prospective convert might not welcome the true notion of his rebellion before God (i.e., his sin) and a time of God’s future judgment, I withhold nothing and keep no secrets in laying out the full gospel.

This is not the case with Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is also not the case with the gospel according to Calvinism. George Bryson writes:

Some Calvinists are not only less than totally up-front, but they are not even being altogether honest with the non-Calvinists whom they are targeting. In the promotion of doctrine, what is held back or not expressed (relative to those doctrines) can be very misleading.^[33]

Bryson contends that “some Calvinists do not want non-Calvinists to know the full implications of Calvinism until after they have become committed Calvinists.”^[34] It should not be hard to figure out the reasons why a “potential” convert might not want to know intimately the core doctrines of Calvinism from the beginning.

If the forbearer of the Calvinist gospel message cannot or will not be upfront and direct about the doctrines pertaining to salvation (in public or private life), the skeptic must seriously consider why. Furthermore, we should wonder whether Jesus Himself was hiding some important aspects of His messages. Was He withholding the doctrine of double predestination when He called everyone to come and receive the Bread of Life? Did He expect the crowds to understand that when He said “all” or “world” what He really meant was “some” and “elect”? Did He assume that His followers would understand that “grace” could have multiple definitions? Did Jesus expect His apostles to understand that their efforts to evangelize would be ultimately futile? Indeed, Chuck Smith asks, “Why would the God of all truth, who speaks so sternly against lying, send His servants out to promote such a lie?”^[35]

Yet, some Calvinists today seem guilty of being dishonest in presenting their particular gospel. One Reformed Southern Baptist pastor, in an article entitled “Instructions for Local Church Reformation,” advises other Calvinist pastors:

Choose a few men who are sincere, teachable and spiritually minded and spend time with them in study and prayer. They will help you to reform. . . . In the pulpit, don’t use theological language that is not found in the Bible. Avoid terms such as Calvinism, reformed, doctrines of grace, particular redemption, etc. Most people will not know what you are talking about. Many that do will become inflamed against you.^[36]

We read about dishonesty concerning the gospel early in church history. Certain men came down from Jerusalem teaching the brethren that unless they were “circumcised according to the custom of Moses,” they could “not be saved” (Acts 15:1, NKJV).^[37] Because of this threat to the gospel message, the apostles gathered and directly faced the problem. The main reason the apostles opposed this teaching was because of its false message of salvation, which added “works” to the free grace of God and limited those who could be saved to those who were circumcised. Similarly, Calvinism limits salvation to “the elect.” “Certain men” (Calvinists) are teaching the brethren that some people can “not be saved” at all.

Like Paul, the Christian is called to confront those who are “not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.”^[38] In Galatians chapter 2, Paul confronted Peter about his hypocrisy. Although the gospel was commanded to be taken to all of humanity, Peter would fellowship only with the Gentiles in the absence of the Jewish elite. Thus, while Peter believed the gospel was for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, his actions differed from his beliefs. He witnessed mainly to the Jewish people who came from Jerusalem. When Paul noticed Peter compromising the truth of the gospel, he said, “Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; . . . But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the gospel, I said to Peter before them all . . .”^[39] (Galatians 2:11–14, NKJV). Paul then brings Peter’s hypocrisy into the light.

Likewise, those who herald Calvinism today do not practice what they preach. While on the outside, Calvinists claim that their gospel is for all people, their doctrines clearly declare otherwise. To win the minds of those around them, their doctrine of limited atonement is not openly addressed. Calvinists, as with all cultists, are not straightforward about their message. If they were straightforward, there would be no need for Calvin expositors like Pink, White, and Sproul to malign the intended meanings of simple words like “world”; there would be no need for Calvinist teachers to make unfounded distinctions in words like “love,” “grace,” and “calling”; and there would be no need to change the TULIP labels. The following example illustrates how far from straightforward a Calvinist can be.

I recently watched an episode of a sitcom, in which the manager of a paper resale office was offered a promotion in the company, but only if he laid off several of his employees. The manager, though close friends with many of his employees, agreed to take the new position. Not knowing their fate, his staff anxiously sought his decision. When he came out of his office, he said, “I have good news and bad news. I’ll tell you the bad news first. A lot of you will lose your job here or be forced to relocate to Sweden.” At this, the employees were distraught and saddened. But their regional manager was quick to try and raise their spirits by finishing, “And now the good news—I was offered to be head manager over all of the U.K.” As he looked for approval among his employees, they offered him none. After a minute of silence, one of the employees pointed out the stupidity of his ex-manager: “That’s not good news. All you have is bad news and irrelevant news. We’ve just lost our jobs so you could be promoted, and you think we should be happy for you?”^[40]

Likewise, the gospel of Calvinism looks into the faces of people whom their god has doomed to eternal fire and expects a joyful response to their fate. In Luke 2:10, the angel of the Lord announces the true gospel of Christ as “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.” Is one to believe that this angel from God held the same unreasonable logic of the new U.K. branch manager? Did the angel really think that the unfortunate souls would find the news of their damnation as “good tidings and great joy?”

These types of contradictions that plague Calvin’s TULIP make for a confusing and inconsistent theology. Why does it maintain such contradictions? Is it because Christians would not swallow Calvinism if it were not watered down? Is it because Calvinism’s “unveiled” gospel would turn potential new converts away instead of winning them over? Why unbelievers, let alone Christians, would be repulsed by Calvinism’s deterministic form of Christianity should be no surprise, for it must bear a certain fruit in the lives of its followers.

Micah Coate, A Cultish Side of Calvinism (Innovo Publishing, 2011), 263, 267–71.

* Calvin was perfectly aware that the determinism of divine predestination was ‘dreadful indeed’ to humanity. Moreover, like most believers in predestination (Luther and Augustine included), he felt that only a minority would be saved – it was not Calvin but Augustine in one of his savage late anti-Pelagian works who observed that God had arranged this in order to give the elect all the more reason to be grateful for their elect status.38 Calvin was not prepared to put a figure on the proportion of the saved, varying his estimates for artistic effect from his habitual estimate of one in a hundred to one in twenty, or even one in five in more generous moods. He was also very wary of saying that people could be certain of their own election, let alone identify others among the elect.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 244.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] MacCulloch, The Reformation, 244.

[23] Ibid., 245.

[….]

[33] George Bryson, The Dark Side of Calvinism: The Calvinist Caste System (Santa Ana, CA: Calvary Chapel Publishing, 2004), 23.

[34] Ibid., 22.

[35] Smith, Foreword to The Dark Side of Calvinism.

[36] Ernest C. Reisinger and D. Matthew Allen, A Quiet Revolution: A Chronicle of Beginnings of Reformation in the Southern Baptist Convention [online]; accessed by RPT 8/27/2026

[37] NKJV, Acts 15:1.

[38] NKJV, Galatians 2:14.

[39] NKJV, Galatians 2:11–14.

[40] Ricky Gervais, The Office, Season 1, Disc 2, Episode 6 (BBC Amazon Prime Video)

Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom (Shedd vs. Laws of Logic)

Published August 22, 2026September 7, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

The Logical Problem (PDF for download)

The central problem is that W. G. T. Shedd [(1820–1894) was a prominent 19th-century American Presbyterian theologian and professor, best known for his rigorous defense of Reformed theology and divine sovereignty] attempts to hold together exhaustive divine determination and a genuinely self-determining human will without first showing that those claims are logically compatible in the same respect.

This critique is therefore directed first at Shedd’s formulation and only secondarily at Calvinism insofar as Calvinistic compatibilism supplies the framework that creates the tension.

“The Westminster Standards, in common with the Calvinistic creeds generally, begin with affirming the universal sovereignty of God over his entire universe: over heaven, earth, and hell; and comprehend all beings and all events under his dominion. Nothing comes to pass contrary to his decree. Nothing happens by chance. Even moral evil, which he abhors and forbids, occurs by ‘the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God;’ and yet occurs through the agency of the unforced and self-determining will of man as the efficient.”^[1]

Shedd is therefore making three claims:

A. Nothing happens contrary to God’s decree.
B. God’s decree encompasses even moral evil.
C. Moral evil nevertheless occurs through the “unforced and self-determining will of man.”

And this is where the law of non-contradiction becomes relevant.

The law of non-contradiction is one of the foundational principles of rational thought. As Ted Honderich’s Oxford Companion to Philosophy explains, “a theory in which this law fails…is an inconsistent theory.”^[2]Manuel Velasquez likewise describes the law as “the foundation of logical reasoning.”^[3]

William S. Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian make the implication especially clear when discussing contradictory premises. They explain that when an argument contains premises that contradict one another, “one premise cancels out the other.” It may be possible for one proposition or the other to be true, but contradictory propositions cannot be true simultaneously.^[4]

J.P. Moreland makes this principle especially useful by showing how a proposition can also undermine itself. As he puts it, “When a statement fails to satisfy itself (i.e., to conform to its own criteria of validity or acceptability), it is self-refuting…,” in other words, “A” cannot be both “non-A” and “A” at the same time.^[5] His examples include statements such as “I cannot say a word in English” when spoken in English, “I do not exist,” and “there are no truths.” In each case, the statement defeats itself because its truth would require the very thing it denies.

This distinction is important because the problem under consideration is not merely that Shedd’s formulation is difficult to understand. The question is whether the propositions themselves are logically compatible.

The appeal to mystery cannot resolve the issue unless the relevant terms are first stabilized: “determines” must identify the factor that makes one outcome certain rather than merely foreknown, “self-determining” must clarify whether the will ultimately settles between alternatives, “ultimate determiner” must distinguish the immediate agent from the decisive causal source, and “permission” must explain whether God merely allows an outcome or decrees the conditions that render it certain.

That principle matters here.

The question is not whether we can place Shedd’s statements together in the same paragraph. Obviously, we can. The question is whether they can all be true in the same sense at the same time.

If “self-determining” means that the human will genuinely determines which choice it will make, then God’s exhaustive decree cannot simultaneously be the determining cause of that same choice. But if God’s decree determines which choice the person will inevitably make, then the person may be the immediate agent of that choice, but calling his will “self-determining” becomes problematic.

So consider the two propositions at the heart of Shedd’s formulation:

God’s decree determines that this particular human action will occur.

And:

The human will is itself self-determining with respect to this particular action.

If “self-determining” means only that the person acts voluntarily according to desire, Shedd may be describing compatibilist freedom; if it means that the person could ultimately determine otherwise under the same conditions, he is invoking libertarian freedom, and the two uses cannot be treated as interchangeable.

The person can be the immediate agent who chooses and can act willingly without external compulsion, but agency and voluntariness do not by themselves establish that the will is the ultimate determiner of the action.

That distinction brings us to the real philosophical question:

Could the person have determined otherwise?

If God’s decree has made one particular outcome certain, then the important question isn’t merely whether the person wanted to do it. The question is whether he possessed the genuine ability to determine an alternative outcome.

And that is why simply calling the will “unforced” does not settle the question. Nor does calling it “self-determining.” Those terms themselves require definition. If “unforced” merely means that nobody externally coerced the person, there is no contradiction in saying that he acted willingly.

But if “self-determining” means that the person’s will ultimately determined which of genuinely available alternatives would occur, then exhaustive divine determination presents a serious logical problem.

The issue, then, is not whether God can know something we do not understand. The issue is whether two mutually exclusive descriptions of the same human choice can both be true in the same sense.

Mystery, Contradiction, and the Limits of the Calvinist Reconciliation

It is important at the outset to distinguish between a mystery and a contradiction. Christianity unquestionably contains truths whose full explanation exceeds human comprehension. The existence of mystery, therefore, is not itself problematic. The more precise question is whether an appeal to mystery acknowledges the limits of human understanding concerning truths revealed in Scripture, or whether it is being employed to reconcile propositions that are themselves incompatible.

This framework now applies directly to the Calvinist appeal to mystery. Wayne Grudem recognizes that Christianity contains truths that exceed full human comprehension, but he also insists that Scripture does not require belief in contradiction.

But it should also be said that Scripture does not ask us to believe in a contradiction. A contradiction would be “There is one God and there is not one God,” or “God is three persons and God is not three persons,” or even (which is similar to the previous statement) “God is three persons and God is one person.” But to say that “God is three persons and there is one God” is not a contradiction.^[6]

The significance of Grudem’s observation is not that mystery is illegitimate, but that mystery cannot simply be invoked as a substitute for theological coherence. Doctrine may transcend our comprehension without being contradictory.

Rogers advances the argument by moving the issue from general logical coherence to the source of the alleged mystery: if the difficulty arises only after Calvinistic premises are added, then the burden rests on those premises rather than on biblical mystery itself.

This distinction is especially significant in William G. T. Shedd’s treatment of the origin of sin. Shedd acknowledges that the relationship between God’s permissive decree and the entrance of sin presents an “inscrutable mystery.”

Yet Rogers argues that the mystery arises precisely because Calvinism combines divine determinism with compatibilism. Within compatibilism, the creature freely acts according to his strongest desire, but that desire itself is determined by antecedent conditions. Consequently, the creature’s choice is free in the compatibilist sense while, given the identical antecedent conditions, he could not actually have chosen otherwise.

Compatibilism is therefore not an escape from determinism but a particular account of freedom within determinism. John Hendryx explicitly acknowledges that “compatibilism is a form of determinism,” adding that it is “no less deterministic than hard determinism,” so the key question becomes whether responsibility and voluntariness are enough to justify calling the will self-determining.

MacArthur sharpens the causal issue by framing God as the primary cause and human beings as secondary causes “moved by the primary cause.” Even if MacArthur rejects the conclusion that God is morally responsible for evil, his formulation confirms the analytical question: can a will moved by a determining primary cause also be called the ultimate determiner of its own choice?

This creates a significant difficulty for Shedd’s appeal to divine permission. Shedd can distinguish God’s permission from direct efficiency and can affirm that the creature freely apostatized. But if God sovereignly established the nature and antecedent conditions from which the creature’s desires necessarily arose, then describing the fall as something God merely permitted does not by itself explain how the fall was not also encompassed within the determinative structure of God’s decree. Rogers therefore observes that Shedd’s language concerning the unfallen will possessing the power to remain holy, while simultaneously acknowledging that its apostasy became certain through a permissive decree, exposes rather than resolves the underlying tension. Shedd himself concludes that the manner in which a non-efficient permissive decree makes the fall certain is an “inscrutable mystery.”^[7]

The same pattern becomes even more conspicuous when the issue moves from the origin of sin to God’s salvific will.

Here the testimony of David Engelsma is particularly significant precisely because Engelsma is not attempting to soften the implications of historic Calvinism. He states:

“That God is gracious only to some in predestination, but gracious to all in the gospel, and that God wills only some to be saved in predestination but wills all to be saved by the gospel, is flat, irreconcilable contradiction. It is not paradox, but contradiction. I speak reverently: God Himself cannot reconcile these teachings.”^[8]

Engelsma then makes an observation that is particularly important to the common appeal to the Trinity as an analogy for this problem. The Trinity is mysterious, but it is not contradictory, because God is one in being and three in persons—not one and three in the same respect. That distinction is crucial. The Christian does not say:

God is one person and three persons.

Nor does he say:

God is one being and three beings.

The apparent numerical conflict disappears because the predicates are being asserted in different respects.

Consequently, to call every difficult Calvinistic reconciliation a “mystery” does not establish that the reconciliation is legitimate. One must first demonstrate that the propositions are compatible.

Indeed, Engelsma goes further. He rejects the attempt to resolve the difficulty through an appeal to different kinds of grace:

“There is no relief for the sheer contradiction … in the doctrine of ‘common grace,’ as though the grace of predestination were a different kind of grace from that revealed in the gospel.”

His argument is that the gospel offer itself is presented as saving grace directed toward those who hear it. If predestination simultaneously teaches that God has eternally determined that only some will receive saving grace, then the distinction between God’s grace in the gospel and God’s grace in predestination cannot simply be introduced as a terminological escape hatch.

And this is where Engelsma becomes especially valuable for our treatment of Shedd. The question is no longer merely:

Can we understand how these things work?

It becomes:

Are the things being asserted actually compatible?

That is a much more fundamental question.

Rogers then shows that the same pattern recurs across Calvinist treatments of compatibilism, the origin of sin, unconditional election, reprobation, the two wills of God, and the “good-faith offer.” Each mechanism—compatibilistic freedom, permissive decree, two wills, hypothetical otherwise-choice, and finally “mystery”—must be evaluated by whether it clarifies the propositions or merely relocates the contradiction.

Importantly, Rogers does not argue that every Calvinist who employs such language is intentionally deceptive. He explicitly says his use of “double talk” is not a charge of malicious intent. Rather, he uses the expression for language that obscures or elides the determinative implications of the system, allowing Calvinists to speak of genuine human choice, divine universal desire, or God’s hatred of sin in ways that may sound libertarian or non-deterministic while the underlying theological definitions remain compatibilistic and decretal.

Thus the issue with Shedd’s appeal to “inscrutable mystery” should not be caricatured as an objection to mystery itself. The issue is whether mystery has actually explained anything. If Shedd’s premises entail that God could have created a world without sin, that God determined the conditions under which the creature would freely choose sin, and that the creature could not have chosen otherwise given those same conditions, then calling the relationship between God’s decree and the certain occurrence of sin an “inscrutable mystery” does not remove those entailments. It merely marks the point at which the system can no longer provide an account that satisfies its own competing assertions.

And that brings us to the crucial distinction:

A mystery tells us that we do not know how two truths that Scripture teaches fit together. A contradiction occurs when two propositions cannot both be true in the same respect and at the same time. The former is a limitation upon our knowledge; the latter is a problem in the propositions themselves.

Consequently, the appeal to mystery must come after the compatibility of the propositions has been established, not before.

The issue, therefore, is not whether Christianity contains mysteries; it unquestionably does.

Nor is the issue whether finite human beings can comprehend every truth concerning the infinite God; they cannot.

The issue is whether “mystery” is being used to acknowledge the limits of human knowledge concerning what Scripture reveals, or to protect a theological deduction from the consequences that follow from its own premises.

A mystery may transcend comprehension without violating coherence. But when propositions asserted in the same respect cannot be reconciled, calling the resulting contradiction a “mystery” does not resolve it. It merely gives the contradiction a theological name.

We should not call something a “mystery” merely because we have not yet demonstrated that the propositions are compatible. Before mystery can be invoked, the terms must first be shown to be logically coherent.

That is the point at which Shedd’s formulation deserves scrutiny: unless he can define divine determination, human self-determination, and divine permission in non-equivocal terms, the appeal to mystery does not answer the logical objection but marks the place where the system has stopped explaining itself.

[1] W. G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Mixed and Pure: A Defence of the Westminster Standards (1893), 37.

[2] Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 625.

[3] Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 51.

[4] William S. Sahakian and Mabel Lewis Sahakian, Ideas of the Great Philosophers (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), 23, under “Contradictory Premises.”

Contradictory Premises – Self-Contradictions are necessarily false; consequently, when an argument contains premises which contradict each other, no conclusion is possible. Any conclusion would involve the fallacy of contradictory premises; that is, it would constitute a self-contradiction. When contradictory premises are present in an argument, one premise cancels out the other. It is possible for one or the other of the two premises to be true, but not for both to be simultaneously true. Note the contradictory premises in the following questions: “If God is all-powerful, can he put himself out of existence, then come to life with twice the power he had originally?” “Can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?” “Can God make a round square?” “What would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object?” (page 23)

[5] J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987), 92.

[6] Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 168.

[7] Ronnie W. Rogers, Does God Love All or Some? Comparing Biblical Extensivism and Calvinism’s Exclusivism (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 54–60.

[8] David J. Engelsma, “Is the Denial of the ‘Well-Meant Offer’ Hyper-Calvinism?,” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal 23, no. 2 (April 1990): 60. (Fuller quote from this “high Calvinist”):

It is part of our defence of the denial of the offer that we take the offensive against the offer. We charge that the offer involves a Calvinist in sheer contradiction. That God is gracious only to some in predestination, but gracious to all in the gospel, and that God wills only some to be saved in predestination but wills all to be saved by the gospel, is flat, irreconcilable contradiction. It is not paradox, but contradiction. I speak reverently: God Himself cannot reconcile these teachings. Nor is there any similarity between this contradiction and the truth of the Trinity that surpasses our understanding. The truth of the Trinity is not contradictory, for it holds that God is one in being and three in persons, not, therefore, one and three in the very same respects.

There is no relief for the sheer contradiction in which the offer involves a Calvinist in the doctrine of “common grace,” as though the grace of predestination were a different kind of grace from that revealed in the gospel. For the offer exactly teaches that the grace of God for all is grace shown in the preaching of the gospel. This grace is not some non-saving favour directed towards a prosperous earthly life, but saving grace, the grace of God in His dear Son, a grace that desires eternal salvation for all who hear the gospel. The offer proposes universal saving grace—precisely that which is denied by predestination.

Nor is there any relief from this absolute, intolerable contradiction in a distinction between God’s hidden will and God’s revealed will. This is attempted as some kind of explanation and mitigation of the contradiction: The desire to save all (of the offer) is God’s revealed will; the will to save only some (of predestination) is His hidden will. But this effort to relieve the tension of the contradiction in which the offer involves Calvinists gets us nowhere. For one thing, the will of God to save only some and not all is not hidden, but revealed. It is found on every page of Scripture. It is Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 22:14: God has eternally chosen only some (“few”) to be saved, in distinction from the others (“many”). For another thing, the distinction leaves us right where we were before the distinction was invented: God has two, diametrically opposite, conflicting wills.

Such teaching is destructive of truth and fatal to knowledge of truth. Such teaching thrusts confusion and strife into the very being of God: Does God, or does He not, desire every human to be saved? Is God, or is He not, in His own being, gracious in Jesus to every human? I make bold to suggest that the god of the offer had a very peculiar way of displaying his grace to all and of carrying out his will to save all in the time of the old covenant, when he showed his word unto Jacob, but did not deal so with any nation (cf. Psalm 147:19-20). Is it presumptuous humbly to request of the offer-god worshipped by professing Calvinists that he make up his mind between the alternatives of the offer (the will to save all) and of predestination (the will to damn some)?

A Recent Sermon Maligning God’s Character/Holiness

Published August 22, 2026August 22, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted January 1st, 2026 – Updated Today

My visual video response:

TRANSCRIPT AT THE END – JUMP TO IT

Yes, this is from the church I attend. A wonderful place to attend, but definitely Calvinistic. This is a newer pastor, and I must say, even though I vehemently disagree, at least he is preaching honestly. Another pastor months before preached a sermon where he quoted Joshua 24:15 and said:

“Make a choice. Choose this day. In fact, you can choose one of the… He’s not saying that he’s happy if you choose the pagan gods, but he says, in fact, pick one of the pagan gods. Do you know that something that God is extremely kind and gracious to us and that he gave us free will? Did you know that? He didn’t force a relationship on us. He gave us free will. Do you remember what he gave Adam and Eve? Free will. You can make a choice. I’m not gonna force it. Hey, you choose, yeah, you, make the choice.”

When I asked an elder if this pastor really believed this statement he made regarding free will from the pulpit, I got an honest answer of “No.”

So I love the almost Provisionist preaching and call to come to God in faith — but this is not what is REALLY believed as these pastors overlay TULIP on to their understanding of Biblical text. I struggle with the good that can come from the “alter call” type preaching of the “Armininian style” while they sleep as a Calvinist. That being said, it is a duplicitous preaching like they make God out to be by overlaying a 16^th century philosophy onto God. A Jaundiced view at best. AND, I can truly appreciate the rawness of the logical outcomes being honestly preached from the pulpit. Although even this pastor does not follow his own thinking to their ends without hemming and hawing with a myriad of qualifiers and nuances.

Here is my FACEBOOK comments on this sermon:

So, in the past I have praised good sermons from my church… if I do that, should I at times not critique [as publicly] a bad one? I will be clipping the main idea of it from the video for my site [like I have uploaded some clips from the good ones], but that is in the future tense. I am thankful, however, that this pastor was so forthright, and didn’t hide behind the “preaching as an Arminian, sleep as a Calvinist” idea.

Honest preaching is laudable. This was essentially the sermon:

(a) God decrees and ordains all evil for His glory
(b) God saves us from the evil He decreed and ordained…. for His glory.

In other words, while this pastor didn’t follow his sermon to its logical conclusion, it is essentially God saving us from Himself. So, all the pain and suffering mentioned in stories and text… are all God caused. Remember, this pastor chose AW Pink’s book for the last Monday men’s service series. [It could have been more in the pastorate choosing Pink’s book, as far as I know — because I do not actually know how these books are approved.] Pink is a hyper Calvinist, like this Pastor publicly is.

All I was thinking was,

“well, people who don’t get the raw [5-point, Calvinist] truth from other pastors are hearing it now.”

On the flip side of that “positive”, the new people on the “faith fence” — which only makes sense to those of the non-Calvinist soteriological bent — may have wrote off Crossroads as their home. Or worse yet, wrote off God.

Which in this pastor’s view, was also ordained.

The same pastor here eisegetes into Scripture a 16th century doctrine not understood as being the Bible before Calvin popularized it via his doctrinal hero:

The reason I added the SNL skit was to note that right when the sermon was starting to state some good position or truth, it was dashed shortly after by the “doctrines of grace.”

UPDATED CONVO

In another example, after a wonderful, Gospel oriented presentation by a senior pastor at the men’s Monday night class, I was perplexed. I thought I was crazy in fact. I was just about to tender my separation letter to the elders, pastors, and peeps at church. So I asked a question in text of the pastor (again, no names):

Ouch. That confirmed and upset me a bit. Did you catch it? This pastor admits that in order to convert people with the Gospel message, he withholds parts of his systematic because it would interfere with his evangelism.

Um… yeah it would.

But again, it is duplicitous in nature, as stated earlier.

How?

There is no Gospel in Calvinism.

This illustration [via NotWilliangThatAny] is aiming to reflect a real tension in Calvinist theology, not exaggerate it. It takes the idea of election and shows it visually in terms of proportion. One petal represents the elect, while many “nots” represent those passed over. The focus is on how small the number of the elect might be compared to everyone else.

First, this connects to limited atonement. In this view, Christ’s death is effective only for the elect, not for every individual. Passages like John 10:26, “you do not believe because you are not among my sheep,” and John 17:9, “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me,” are often used to support this. The illustration reflects that by showing a small number who are truly loved in a saving sense, and many who are not.

Second, it ties to unconditional election and reprobation. God chooses some to receive mercy while others are passed over. Romans 9:13 says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” and Romans 9:22 speaks of “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” The many “nots” in the image visually represent this larger group who are not chosen, emphasizing the imbalance.

Third, it reflects the idea that salvific love is not universal. While Calvinists affirm that God shows a kind of general love or kindness to all (Matthew 5:45), His saving love is reserved for a specific people. The illustration presses on that distinction by asking what it means in practice. If most people are not recipients of that saving love, then the experience of humanity is largely outside of it.

This leads to a key question. If Scripture says God “so loved the world” (John 3:16) and desires “all people to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4), how should we understand the scope of His love? Does the picture of a few loved and many not align with the overall tone and message of the Bible, or should we rethink how we define God’s saving love?

Transcript With More Commentary:

A Recent Sermon Maligning God’s Character Holiness – TRANSCRIPT

Now before we jump into this, I do want to take a few moments to give us some context. I think it’s important sometimes, if you just pluck a passage out of a book, to take some time to give the book a little bit of context. So I want to do that this morning, just give you a couple of things to put in your mind.

We’re going to go to seminary for the next few minutes. Some of you are saying, “Pastor, I am in my seventh level of eggnog hangover. You’re asking me to think.” Let me give you a couple of points we can hang our thoughts on.

Number one, I want you to note God’s providential rule. Look there at verse 16:

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise man, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.”

This man was so obsessed with himself, so obsessed with his rule, he wouldn’t suffer a single person to have his rule, to have his power. He’d kill whole swaths of people to make sure.

Now, this was a small village. Bethlehem was a tiny village back then. Most scholars believed he put to death about 20 or 30 young boys. And you may say, “Well, they got nothing on America. We killed millions of them.”

He killed 20 or 30 out of a very small village. The village was smaller than the people in this room. Can you imagine this room if suddenly we all discovered every one of your boys two years younger were dead, were killed? Wouldn’t that be awful?

Can you imagine them being pulled away from the mothers clinging on to their boys as they took the boys and executed them? A sad, terrible thought. This man, his rage made this happen. His tyranny made this happen.

It may come as a surprise to you, maybe not, but this existence, this universe, I mentioned a moment ago, this world is a history of tragedy. I know I’m speaking in generalizations. I know there’s lots of joy and lots of happiness and family, especially this time of year.

But again, prior to really the modern era, we didn’t have ways of hiding all the difficulty and hardship. We didn’t have sanitized institutions that sort of hid that away from us. We didn’t develop communities full of cops and firemen where there’s lots of safety and joy and peace.

No, everyone was exposed to everything. Most people who died of old age died in the home with their family members. So most people would have seen death for most of history in most cultures.

Let me point this out. When all those inventions came, democracy and capitalism and all the things that raised our standard of life and hid away some of the darker things of this world, did this world become less tragic?

Not at all.

The twentieth century, by every measure, both percentage and numerically, was the bloodiest century of all.

We live in a world of tragedy. We live in a world of darkness. And as believers, we’re forced to reconcile these two realities: that God is sovereign, God is in charge of everything, God is controlling the universe, but there remains this curse on the universe.

This is a difficulty for us. And we see this difficulty all the way to the point to our greatest difficulty, which is death, right? We face death just like these boys did.

How do a lot of people cope with this curse?

Well, some people just try to remain ignorant, right? I do this sometimes. I read news for a few weeks and I just get sick of it. I’m just tired of bad news and I just turn it off and turn that tap off and ignore it for a few days. Because it’s just so sad. It’s so tragic. It seems like there’s just an ever-ending flow of sin and depravity. I get tired of it.

So a lot of us, you stick your head in the sand. Ignorance is bliss. We just try to ignore what’s going on around us.

Second, a lot of people medicate, right? Whether they medicate through the bottle or through prescribed drugs or newly legal drugs or whatever, they try to find a way to escape it mentally. Again, it’s sort of like ignorance; it’s just getting away from it, ignoring it, trying to find a new way to deal with it.

And of course, another way that people deal with it is they just indulge. They say, “Well, this world’s such a terrible place. I might as well just give in to my carnal desires. If I can’t beat them, join them. Might as well just be as depraved as the rest of this world here.”

Well, we as believers have a different hope. We believe that any evil, no matter how dark, no matter how horrifying, no matter how deadly, any evil is not merely allowed, not merely permitted, but purposed and ordained by our God so that He can display His power, His beauty, His joy in the midst of it.

It’s so He can display His love, His mercy. It’s so He can have something that He can save us from.

And Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise man, became furious. And he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under.

The saddest song of all time, by my estimation, is in fact a Christmas song, likely from the 1300s. We know it as “Coventry Carol.” You may not recognize the title, but if you heard the very haunting, ominous tune, it has what’s called the Picardy Third.

Don’t get too excited; I’m not going to sing it for you. Don’t want your ears to bleed.

This sad song probably was written, the educated guess, it was written after the bubonic plague had swept through a small village and, of course, killed a number of people, but notably killed all the children from a certain age and younger.

And that’s when the bard, when he could hear the weeping of the mothers in the homes, he picked up his pen, so to speak, and wrote this song, “Coventry Carol.”

THE BEEPS ARE GOING BACK INTO THE SERMON AND REMINDING
THE LISTENER WHAT GOD SOVEREIGNLY BROUGHT ABOUT
– AS A REMINDER OF HOW JON UNDERMINED HIS OWN POSITION AND STATEMENTS.

[beep]

Now I want you to understand something. I don’t think that these fellows, the Maccabeans, were always faithful Yahweh followers who put their hope in the Messiah. In fact, we know it’s true by some of the things they did.

Indeed, one of the things that they did is sort of in a Muslim way, they would go around and convert people at the point of a sword.

[beep]

Herod the Great, when he wasn’t building, he was killing. And he killed anybody he thought would come in his way of ruling and having power. He started with his in-laws. He killed his father-in-law and mother-in-law.

Some of you fellows are saying, “Well, I can understand, you know, but sometimes you can get in a situation where…” He went on to kill several other in-laws. He killed some cousins, and then he discovered for some reason his wife didn’t like him anymore, so he killed her.

He thought he was done killing, and then he realized his oldest son was coming of age and he was pretty bright and articulate, so he killed him as well.

This man was a psychopath, at the very least, probably demon-possessed.

[beep]

But Matthew repeats it to say that this curse that we live under, this tragedy, this tyranny is about to be reversed.

Here is a Rebuttal of sorts… first with this reminder: One of the quotes used here is from a book recommended at a men’s group at my old church. Can you guess why I moved on and caution others of this unhealthy doctrine? VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

Calvinism Limits God’s Holiness and Omnipotence

Does Calvinism’s doctrine of exhaustive divine determinism actually magnify God’s sovereignty—or does it create serious problems for God’s holiness, omnipotence, and human responsibility?

In this presentation, prominent Calvinists—including John Piper, J.I. Packer, Edwin Palmer, Gordon Clark, R.C. Sproul, and John Calvin himself—are allowed to speak for themselves about God’s decree, sin, human choices, and the events that come to pass.

If God has eternally determined everything that happens, including sinful actions, what does that mean for God’s relationship to evil? And does God really need to determine every human choice in order to remain sovereign?

The argument presented here is simple: a God who can allow genuine human rebellion and still accomplish everything He intends is not less sovereign—but more sovereign.

RESPONSE

When Sovereignty Becomes the Explanation for Evil

What makes this sermon particularly troubling is not simply that the pastor believes in a strong doctrine of divine sovereignty. Christians should believe that God is sovereign. The problem is the definition of sovereignty being employed. The pastor tells his congregation that God is “in charge of everything” and “controlling the universe,” but then makes the crucial assertion that any evil—no matter how dark, horrifying, or deadly—is “not merely allowed, not merely permitted, but purposed and ordained by our God.”

That is a very different claim from saying that God permits evil, restrains evil, works through evil, or sovereignly brings good out of evil. He explicitly rejects those lesser formulations and insists upon divine purpose and ordination of evil itself.

That becomes especially disturbing because of how he has already described Herod. Herod’s rage “made this happen.” His tyranny “made this happen.” He was obsessed with power, murdered his family members, murdered his own wife and son, and was described as a psychopath. The pastor wants us to see Herod’s actions as genuinely wicked and genuinely attributable to Herod.

But if the murders of Bethlehem were themselves eternally and infallibly purposed and ordained by God, then the sermon owes us an explanation of what God’s sovereignty means in relation to Herod’s wickedness. Herod certainly intended evil—but under exhaustive divine determinism, God had already determined that Herod would have that intention, would make those decisions, would perform those murders, and that those particular children would die. The creature is then condemned for carrying out what the decree made certain would occur.

This is precisely why the distinction between permission and ordination matters so much. If God permits Herod to murder, God has not thereby become the moral author of Herod’s murderous decision. God can judge Herod for an act that God permitted while simultaneously overruling that act for His own purposes. But if God specifically ordained the murderous act itself—if the event could not possibly have occurred otherwise because God eternally decreed that it occur—then the theological problem becomes considerably more serious. The question is no longer merely, “Can God use evil for good?” Of course He can. The question becomes, “Why must the evil itself be included within God’s determining decree in order for God to be sovereign?”

And the answer cannot simply be, “Because otherwise God would not be sovereign.” That assumes the very definition that needs to be demonstrated. A God who must causally determine every human decision in order to remain sovereign is not necessarily a God with a larger view of sovereignty. One could argue that it is actually a smaller view of God:

a God who must determine every movement in order to guarantee His purposes.

A greater sovereignty is possible—the God who can permit genuine rebellion, allow creatures to act contrary to His moral desires, and still guarantee that no rebellion can ultimately frustrate His purposes. In that framework, God does not lose control when Herod sins. Herod is genuinely responsible for Herod’s evil, while God remains fully capable of accomplishing His purposes through and despite it.

This is especially important in light of the theological material being promoted within the church. You mentioned that the church sold books by John Piper that present an extremely strong view of God’s relationship to evil, and that this pastor had the men studying A. W. Pink’s The Sovereignty of God. That matters because Pink does not merely teach a generic doctrine that God is sovereign.

He explicitly argues that God decreed the Fall and that God “foreordained all its fruits and activities.” He describes God as having “foreordained all the activities of evil” and says that wicked creatures can do nothing except what God’s eternal counsel has determined. Pink even argues that saying God merely permits evil is insufficient to account for the biblical facts; he insists that God’s hand and counsel determined what wicked people would do.

So the pastor’s language in this sermon should not be treated as an isolated slip of the tongue. When someone steeped in that theological tradition tells his congregation that evil is not merely permitted but “purposed and ordained” by God, there is a very specific theological meaning available to that statement. It is the same theological trajectory in which God’s exhaustive decree encompasses not merely the existence of evil but the particular acts through which evil occurs.

That is why the statement deserves to be challenged rather than softened into the harmless proposition that “God can bring good out of bad circumstances.”

And this is where the sermon begins to undermine its own moral force. The pastor spends considerable time asking the congregation to recoil from Herod. He wants us to feel the horror of mothers having their children ripped away and executed. He wants us to recognize Herod’s rage and tyranny as the cause of the tragedy. He wants us to understand that Herod was a wicked man who killed people because he wanted power. All of that makes perfect moral sense. But then he tells us that every evil is ultimately purposed and ordained by God. If that statement is meant in the exhaustive Calvinistic sense, then Herod’s evil was not merely something God knew would happen and permitted. It was something God had eternally incorporated into His decree.

That produces an uncomfortable asymmetry. Herod cannot escape responsibility because he acted according to his own wicked desires. But God, according to the same system, determined that Herod would possess those wicked desires, determined that he would exercise them, determined the particular murders that would result, and determined that those particular children would die. The standard Calvinist answer is that God and Herod had different intentions:

Herod intended evil, while God intended a righteous purpose.

But that distinction does not answer the deeper question. It explains why Herod’s motive was evil, but it does not explain why God had to eternally determine that the evil action occur at all.

This is where the doctrine begins to put pressure on God’s holiness. The biblical God does not need to be the determiner of sin in order to remain sovereign over sinners. James does not tell us merely that God does not personally commit sin. He gives us a categorical statement about God’s relationship to evil:

“God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.”

The concern is God’s character. God is holy. Evil is contrary to His nature. Sin is something God judges, hates, and ultimately destroys. We therefore ought to be very cautious about constructing a doctrine of sovereignty that requires us to say that every sinful action was eternally and infallibly determined by God.

There is an important distinction between saying

“God ordained that Christ would redeem the world through the evil actions of wicked men”

and saying

“God ordained every evil action because every evil action was part of His exhaustive decree.”

The first can be seen clearly in the biblical story of the Crucifixion: wicked men genuinely intended evil, while God brought about redemption through what they did. But once the principle is universalized to every evil act, the moral problem becomes much larger. Why stop at the Crucifixion? If every evil is equally “purposed and ordained,” then Herod’s murders, genocide, rape, torture, betrayal, child abuse, and every other horror become part of the same exhaustive decree.

And this is where some formulations of high Calvinism become particularly difficult to defend morally. Pink himself argues that God’s decree extends to “all the activities of evil.” He argues that even the evil actions of Judas and the crucifiers were decreed by God, while simultaneously maintaining that their evil intentions made them guilty. That distinction may preserve a formal doctrine of creaturely culpability, but it does not remove the question of why a holy God had to determine the evil act itself.

The other sermon you provided actually offers a better way to frame God’s greatness. It argues that Scripture presents a world filled with human actions that are “totally antithetical to the desires of a thrice holy God” while God nevertheless remains sovereign.

The point is profound:

God’s sovereignty is not measured by how much evil He determines, but by how completely He can accomplish His purposes without having to become the determiner of evil.

The same sermon argues that God can allow billions of human volitions to occur while still bringing all things together for good and holding people responsible for the choices they make.

That presents a much more compelling picture of divine power. God does not need to micromanage every human decision to remain God. He does not need to decree Herod’s murderous rage in order to guarantee the safety of Christ. He does not need to cause every evil in order to redeem some evil. He can permit rebellion without being threatened by rebellion. He can allow creatures to genuinely resist His moral will without surrendering His ultimate purpose. He can take what Joseph’s brothers meant for evil and turn it toward good without making God the author of their hatred. He can take the greatest act of human wickedness—the murder of His Son—and turn it into the greatest act of redemption in history.

That is not a smaller sovereignty. It is arguably a far greater one.

And this is ultimately why I think your “beeps” in the sermon are important. You were not merely interrupting him to disagree with Calvinism. You were forcing the listener to remember his own words.

First he tells us that Herod’s rage made this happen. Herod’s tyranny made this happen.
Then he tells us that every evil is not merely permitted but purposed and ordained by God.

The listener needs to hold those statements together and ask whether they actually fit.

If the pastor means that God sovereignly permitted Herod’s evil, restrained its extent, and used it to accomplish His redemptive purposes, then there is no fundamental problem. But if he means what the high-Calvinist tradition he was teaching means—that God eternally and infallibly determined that Herod would perform those murders—then the sermon has a serious theological problem. It is asking the congregation to condemn as evil something that, according to its own doctrine, God first determined would necessarily occur.

And that is precisely where I would sharpen the criticism:

the issue is not whether God is sovereign enough to overcome evil. The issue is whether we must redefine God’s sovereignty so that He becomes the determiner of every evil we subsequently condemn.

If that is what sovereignty means, then the doctrine has not magnified God’s holiness and power. It has made God’s relationship to evil unnecessarily—and dangerously—close.

Calvinism’s God Is Too Small | Planes and Boats Edition

Published August 15, 2026August 15, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Right Click and “open link in new tab” for Largest Version

A. W. Pink

“God not only knew the end from the beginning, but He planned, fixed, predestinated everything from the beginning. And, as cause stands to effect, so God’s purpose is the ground of His prescience.” (Teaching Resources International)

DUMMY DIALECT: “God knows the future because God planned the future.”

— Source: Teaching Resources International

Source: A. W. Pink, The Attributes of God, chapter 4, “The Foreknowledge of God.”

Loraine Boettner

“Foreordination in general cannot rest on foreknowledge; for only that which is certain can be foreknown, and only that which is predetermined can be certain. […] and God foreknows only because He has pre-determined. His foreknowledge is but a transcript of His will as to what shall come to pass in the future, and the course which the world takes under His providential control is but the execution of His all-embracing plan.” (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

DUMMY DIALECT: “God knows what will happen because God has already decided what will happen.”

— Source: The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, p. 99 (PDF of Chapter)

James White — debate with A. K. Richardson

“Okay. How many free choices of human beings do you think were involved from the time of Adam downward to the cross that could bring about that exact—the exact people—the high priests, the Romans, Pilate, Herod? I can’t imagine [the] hundreds of millions and literally billions of free choices, and yet their result was fixed. How does that not demonstrate that God’s decree does in fact determine the actions of mankind in time?”

DUMMY DIALECT: “God has to determine the choices in order to guarantee the outcome.”

AK RESPONDS:

Well, first of all, nothing’s too hard for God. I mean, billions and zillions and bajillions of free will choices seems like a lot to us. [….] So I don’t know that, all these millions and millions of free will choices seems like a lot to us, but it doesn’t to God. I don’t think he does.

— Source: James White / A. K. Richardson debate | RPT’s RUMBLE

I want to compare this to my post dealing with my memorized routine when Mormons come to my door. Here is the summary of this presentation:

When Mormon missionaries come to the door, I begin by establishing from Mormon teaching that Heavenly Father is an exalted being who exists within an eternally existing cosmos. I then work through the implications: matter, space, time, intelligences, and the governing laws of reality are not ultimately created by God but precede or exist independently of him. Consequently, laws governing things such as gravity, biology, mathematics, morality, and logic impose themselves upon Mormon deity rather than being realities that God Himself ultimately authored. In this framework, God is therefore not the ultimate, self-existent Creator standing above and sustaining all reality, but a powerful being who exists and operates within a larger, preexisting reality. The punchline of the routine is that the Mormon concept of God is ultimately finite, contingent, and constrained by the very cosmic order in which he exists—in other words, “your God is too small.”

Similarly, I believe Calvinism falls into the same man-made trap.

The Calvinist conception of divine sovereignty raises a different kind of limitation. If God’s sovereignty is defined as the exhaustive determination of everything that comes to pass, then God’s purposes are guaranteed by determining the very thoughts, desires, decisions, and actions through which those purposes are accomplished. As the Good News Apologetics chapter argues, Calvinist determinism makes God the cause of every historical event down to its smallest details, including human attitudes, beliefs, desires, decisions, and actions; in this framework, divine sovereignty effectively becomes theistic determinism.

James White’s argument illustrates the practical implication: if the crucifixion was fixed from eternity, how could billions of genuinely free human choices possibly produce that exact outcome? His answer is that God’s decree “does in fact determine the actions of mankind in time.” In other words, God guarantees the victory by controlling the entire chessboard.

But is determining every move really necessary for an omnipotent God to accomplish His purposes? A greater conception of sovereignty allows God to give His creatures genuine freedom—including the freedom to sin, rebel, resist, and make choices God does not approve—while remaining completely capable of accomplishing His ultimate purposes through and even in spite of those choices. The Good News Apologetics chapter makes this distinction explicitly, arguing that biblical sovereignty does not require God to predetermine everything, but can include God sovereignly establishing the boundaries of creation while granting human beings substantial self-determination.

A.W. Tozer captures this understanding particularly well:

God can sovereignly decree that man be free to make moral choices without decreeing which choices he will make. When man chooses evil, he has not thwarted God’s sovereign will, because God’s decree was not that man choose a particular action, but that man be genuinely free to choose.

As Tozer puts it,

“Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures.”

In other words, genuine human freedom is not evidence that God has surrendered control; it can actually be evidence of a greater sovereignty—one in which God is confident enough in His own power to permit His creatures to make real choices without having to determine those choices Himself.

Tozer’s ocean-liner illustration makes the distinction even clearer. The ship has a predetermined destination, yet the passengers aboard it are not robots whose every movement has been programmed. They can eat, sleep, talk, read, walk the deck, or do countless other things as they please, while the ship continues steadily toward its appointed destination. Tozer’s point is that freedom and sovereignty do not contradict one another. God’s sovereign purposes can establish the ultimate destination without requiring Him to predetermine every action of every passenger along the way.

This provides a striking contrast to the deterministic model: the deterministic God guarantees the destination by controlling the passengers; the sovereign God described by Tozer guarantees the destination while allowing the passengers genuine freedom along the journey.

This is precisely the point of Leighton Flowers’ chess analogy.

One chess master guarantees victory by controlling both sides of the board; the other allows his opponents to make genuinely free moves and nevertheless defeats every opponent because he is simply better at the game. Both arrive at victory, but only one demonstrates the ability to remain sovereign in the presence of genuine opposition. Flowers’ point is that God’s victory over evil does not have to come from controlling or manipulating every evil action that occurs. God can permit evil choices while possessing the wisdom, power, and goodness to overcome them, redirect their consequences, and ultimately accomplish His purposes. The question, then, is not whether God can guarantee His victory, but why He would have to determine every move in order to do so.

A God who must control the board to win demonstrates control; a God who can allow genuine freedom and still unfailingly accomplish His purposes demonstrates something far greater—omnipotence. The first says, in effect,

“I must determine the moves so that I can guarantee the outcome.”

The second says,

“Make your moves. I am still God.”

The first guarantees victory by eliminating the possibility of genuine opposition; the second demonstrates that genuine opposition cannot ultimately threaten God’s purposes. The greater display of sovereignty is not God’s inability to lose because He controls every move, but God’s ability to permit real freedom, endure real rebellion, confront real evil, and still bring His sovereign purposes to pass.

As Tozer’s ocean liner illustrates, the destination can be certain without every passenger’s movement being predetermined. And as Flowers’ chess master illustrates, victory can be certain without controlling the opponent’s hand. That is not a diminished sovereignty. It is sovereignty confident enough to let creation move freely while God remains completely capable of bringing history exactly where He intends it to go.

In a sense the Determinist states:

“If God doesn’t determine every move, He might not accomplish His purposes.”

To which the reply is:

“Why would an omnipotent God need to control the moves of His creatures in order to accomplish His purposes?”

The Flight

Imagine that you decide to take a trip. You call a travel agent and say, “I’d like to book a flight.” The first question the agent asks is simple: “What is your destination?”

“Where are you going?”

You tell the agent your destination, because a trip has to have somewhere it’s going. The destination is the terminus—the point toward which the journey is headed. Whether you’re traveling by airplane, train, or ship, the travel agent needs to know where you’re ultimately going.

Now suppose the agent tells you, “Your destination has already been decided. Your ticket has been booked, your destination has been fixed, and your arrival point has been established before you ever began the journey.”

That’s essentially the basic idea behind the word predestination. Destination tells us where we’re going; predestination means that the destination has been determined beforehand. In the theological sense, the ultimate destinations are heaven and hell. According to the Calvinist understanding, God determined those destinations before we were born—even before the creation of the world. From eternity, God decided to save some people unto everlasting blessedness and to pass over others, allowing them to perish in their sins.

But now consider something important about the analogy: knowing and fixing the destination does not, by itself, tell us everything that happens during the journey.

You board the airplane. You take your seat. Someone else gets up and walks to the restroom. Another passenger reads a book. Someone talks to the person beside him. Another passenger sleeps through the flight. Someone orders a drink. Someone decides to look out the window. Hundreds of individual decisions and movements occur during the flight, yet the plane continues toward its destination.

The destination remains fixed.

The passengers are still moving.

The question is whether the certainty of the destination requires the determination of every movement made by every passenger along the way.

That is where the analogy becomes important for the debate over divine sovereignty and human freedom. Does God have to determine every human thought, desire, decision, and action in order to guarantee His ultimate purposes? Or is God sufficiently sovereign, wise, and powerful to establish His purposes while allowing His creatures genuine freedom along the journey?

A predetermined destination does not necessarily imply a predetermined journey.

ADAPTED FROM:

R. C. Sproul, Chosen by God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986; rev. ed. 1997/2011), chap. 2, “Predestination and the Sovereignty of God,” p 22.
R.C. Sproul, “All Christians Believe in Predestination: The Classic Collection with R.C. Sproul,” YouTube, approximately 11:55–14:15, accessed August 15, 2026.

This will be our bridge Tozer’s ocean liner and Flowers’ chessboard.

The Sailing

Tozer’s ocean liner makes the distinction even clearer: the ship has a predetermined destination, but the passengers are not predetermined. They are free to move about the ship as they please, while the ship continues steadily toward its appointed port.

Imagine two ships sitting in the harbor. Both ships represent Christ. Both are headed toward the same ultimate destination: the blessings God has prepared for those who are “in Christ”—holiness and blamelessness, adoption into God’s family, redemption and forgiveness, an inheritance, and the fulfillment of God’s purpose. The question isn’t whether God provides the ship or whether the destination is ultimately in His hands. The question is who determines which passengers actually board.

In the Calvinist understanding, God chooses the passengers before the voyage ever begins. The passenger does not ultimately determine whether he will board; God has chosen him for salvation and effectually calls him. That calling changes the person’s heart and desires so that he willingly comes to Christ. So the Calvinist can rightly say, “Nobody is forced into heaven against his will.” The person boards willingly—but his willingness itself is the result of God’s prior determining work. God chooses the passenger, God changes the passenger’s disposition, and the passenger then willingly boards. The elect cannot finally refuse the call because God’s grace ensures that they will come.

In the Provisionist understanding, God provides the ship and announces the destination to everyone. Christ is the provision of salvation, and God genuinely invites people to come. His grace precedes the response and enables sinners to respond to the Gospel, but God does not determine which individuals will exercise that response. The person can genuinely say yes—or genuinely say no. Those who trust Christ board the ship and are thereby found “in Christ.” Those who reject the invitation remain outside. The destination and all the blessings belonging to those in Christ are God’s provision; entering into that relationship occurs through faith.

That means the disagreement is not really “forced boarding versus voluntary boarding.” Both sides say the believer boards willingly. The deeper question is: Who determined the willingness? Calvinism says God determined the person who would board and, through effectual calling, ensured that person’s willing response. Provisionism says God graciously enables the response and genuinely invites all, but leaves the decision itself undetermined. In one model, God determines the passenger and guarantees the boarding; in the other, God provides the ship and guarantees that His purposes are not threatened by the passenger’s choice.

And this brings us back to the larger question of sovereignty. If God must determine which passengers will board in order to guarantee His ultimate purposes, then God’s sovereignty is expressed through controlling the passenger. But if God can provide Christ to all, genuinely allow people to accept or reject Him, and still accomplish everything He has purposed, then His sovereignty is expressed through His ability to remain completely sovereign without determining the passenger’s choice.

The question becomes: Does an omnipotent God need to determine every person’s decision in order to accomplish His purposes—or is He powerful enough to let people make real choices and still bring His ship safely into port?

Well?

THE TOWER

Pastor Cucuzza on Election, Foreknowledge, and Predestination

Correcting the “Reformed” Interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9 (+)

Ephesians 1:4-5 explained without Exhaustive Divine Determinism (EDD), and free will involvement.

[….]

Whosoever Believes in Christ Will Become Chosen IN CHRIST (Ephesians 1:3-14) | By Dr. Leighton Flowers, Soteriology101

How one comes to be in Christ is by hearing the Gospel and believing, and then you’re marked in Christ. God has destined beforehand that if you are in Christ (i.e. if you believe in Christ), you will be saved.

This analogy really helps people to see it from this vantage point.

If a storm was coming and a messenger was sent from God saying that a huge storm like no other was coming through and everybody was going to perish. God has placed a Fortress in the middle of the city, and anybody who gets into this Fortress will live. Anybody who stays outside The Fortress will surely die.

The storm comes. Everybody who believes the messenger and gets into The Fortress lives, and everybody outside The Fortress dies. So you could rightly say that it was predestined that those people in The Fortress would live, and it was predestined (and determined beforehand) that everybody outside The Fortress would die.

Notice I have not said anything about God destining who would and would not get into The Fortress. Choosing to run to The Fortress, that is your responsibility.

Well, Christ is our Fortress. So the warning is, if you get into Christ through faith, here are the spiritual blessings that he has destined beforehand: (1) he will save you, (2) he will conform you, (3) he will bring you to where he wants you to be in your Christian walk through circumstances in life, and (4) he will let you live a life participating in the Spirit. But it’s your responsibility to put your faith in him, to trust in him.

It so valuable to understand we do hold to a robust teaching of the doctrine of predestination. We believe the doctrine of predestination. Our source of hope is in the fact that I know my adoption is coming because God has predestined for my adoption according to Romans 8:23, and that God has predestined for those who choose to believe in Christ to be adopted. We eagerly await for our adoption and the redemption of our bodies.

So how do I know I am going to be adopted, and will be brought up to the mansion God has prepared for me? I know that because God has predestined beforehand that spiritual blessing for those who put their faith in Christ. So your responsibility is to put your faith in Christ, get into His Fortress, and then you will live. If you remain outside The Fortress then you will surely die but that’s your fault, not because God didn’t really love you, not because you were created from the womb to be destined for destruction, not because God is demonstrating his wrath through you or created you to to be an object of his wrath. Those teachings are just baggage that’s been added on to the teachings of the Church years after the first century. They were not even introduced into the Church until Augustine, in the fifth century, taught these concepts.

And when you begin to just tear that wrong stuff off that baggage that’s been put on to the Scripture, the Gospel is so much more simple it is so clear, it is so beautiful, and yes it maintains God’s sovereignty and his goodness and his grace, and your responsibility in the whole process. Doesn’t it show the love that God has for everyone by giving them the same Fortress to come into.

The people did not build the Fortress themselves by entering it. God provides the Fortress for all the world. You choose to come in that Fortress, or you choose to stay outside where death and destruction are certain.

Quick Hits | Deuteronomy 30 – Jeremiah 32 – Isaiah 45

Published August 15, 2026August 15, 2026 by Papa Giorgio

Not the best referenced or researched…. QUICK Facebook convo.

Francis A. threw down some “proof texts” for theistic determinism that I will work through. Here is what he said, not to me, but another:

… We can go to Deuteronomy 30 Jeremiah 32 Isaiah 45 the bible screams it [determinism/Calvinism] lol

DEUTERONOMY 30

Deuteronomy 30:6 certainly teaches God’s gracious work in the heart:

“the LORD your God will circumcise your heart.”

Calvin himself understood this as a work of spiritual renewal and regeneration.

The Provisionist response is “God doesn’t change hearts,” rather, the question is whether this verse establishes the additional Calvinist claim that regeneration must occur first and irresistibly produce faith.

Even the immediate context complicates that conclusion. Verses 1–2 speak of Israel returning to the LORD, and verse 10 again speaks of turning to Him with all the heart and soul.

This is where Chris Craig’s discussion, “Monergistic Circumcision? Is That Really a Thing?”, is helpful. He points attention to the larger biblical context of “heart circumcision.” Deuteronomy 10:16 actually commands Israel,

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”

Jeremiah 4:4 similarly calls people to circumcise their hearts. That does not mean humans regenerate themselves; it demonstrates that Scripture can speak simultaneously of God’s gracious work and a genuine human response. The tension is also recognized in the Bible.org treatment of Deuteronomy 30:6, which notes that God performs the circumcision here while Israel is commanded to perform the spiritual act elsewhere.

Leighton Flowers makes a similar contextual point in “Is Faith an Effectual Gift?”. The issue isn’t whether God’s grace is necessary—it absolutely is. Rather, Deuteronomy 30 does not explicitly present the Calvinistic sequence of regeneration → repentance → faith.

In fact, immediately after verse 6, Moses says, “And you shall again obey the LORD” (v. 8), and then speaks of turning to the LORD “with all your heart and with all your soul” (v. 10). Finally, verses 11–14 deserve serious attention:

“this commandment…is not too difficult for you,”

And

“the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

Whatever one concludes about regeneration, Moses is not presenting God’s revealed command as something people are constitutionally incapable of responding to until an irresistible regeneration occurs.

Thus, Deuteronomy 30:6 demonstrates God’s gracious initiative; it does not, by itself, establish Calvinism’s deterministic order of regeneration preceding faith. The real disagreement remains what God’s grace accomplishes: does grace change the will first so that faith becomes inevitable, or does grace overcome our inability by enabling a genuine response?

JEREMIAH 32

Jeremiah 31:33 and 32:39–40 are sometimes presented as proof that God must unilaterally regenerate the sinner before the sinner can respond: God writes His law on their hearts, gives them “one heart and one way,” and puts His fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Him. But Daniel Whitby directly challenges that inference in his Refuting Arguments for Irresistible Grace. He first points out that these promises concern the whole house of Israel and Judah, rather than being explicitly restricted to a secretly elected subset. He then argues that promises made to a corporate people cannot simply be turned into proof that God’s work upon individuals is necessarily irresistible. (Daniel Whitby, “Refuting Arguments for Irresistible Grace (Part 3),” Society of Evangelical Arminians)

Whitby’s deeper point is that God’s gracious action does not imply human passivity. Scripture repeatedly commands people to do what God also promises to accomplish: God promises to circumcise the heart, yet commands people to circumcise their hearts; He promises to turn and restore His people, yet repeatedly calls them to turn to Him. Whitby therefore argues that when Scripture says God “gives” something that He also commands people to exercise, the exercise of the human faculty is still involved. Applied to Jeremiah 31–32, God’s promise to write His law and put His fear in their hearts demonstrates God’s gracious initiative and assistance, but it does not establish the Calvinist claim that the sinner is purely passive or that God’s grace must irresistibly produce faith. As Whitby puts it elsewhere in the same discussion, God’s calls to spiritually dead people to “hear,” “turn,” and “live” are not meaningless commands to do something that God alone can perform. (Daniel Whitby, “Refuting Arguments for Irresistible Grace (Part 3),” Society of Evangelical Arminians)

ISAIAH 45

The Calvinist reading of Isaiah 45:22 generally depends upon making a distinction that the verse itself does not make. God declares, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” Calvinism can acknowledge that this is a genuine universal proclamation while distinguishing it from the effectual call—the inward work supposedly given only to the elect. In that framework, the command to “look” is the outward call, while only those whom God has already determined to save receive the inward, irresistible grace that enables them actually to do so. The difficulty is that Isaiah does not say, “Look unto me if I have first regenerated you,” nor does he introduce two different kinds of saving calls. The text simply presents God as the source of salvation and calls “all the ends of the earth” to look to Him.

This creates an important exegetical question for the Calvinist interpretation: Where does Isaiah 45:22 teach the additional step of pre-faith regeneration followed by an irresistible response? The Calvinist system supplies that sequence, but the verse itself supplies only the divine invitation and the promised salvation: “Look… and be saved.” Indeed, Calvin himself acknowledged the breadth of the invitation, describing Isaiah 45:22 as God inviting “all without exception” to come to Him. The Provisionist objection, therefore, is not that God lacks sovereignty or that sinners can save themselves. It is that God’s sovereign grace can genuinely enable the commanded response without determining that response irresistibly. Isaiah says God saves; it says God calls; it tells people to look. The Calvinist must demonstrate from the text—not merely import from the theological system—why that call must be understood as an ineffectual outward call for most people and an irresistible regenerating call for a select few.

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Religio-Political Talk (RPT)

"I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss." ~ G.K. Chesterton

Augustinian Determinism

Augustine of Hippo’s Gnostic Influence on the Church (Part 1)

Is Calvinism a Heresy? (Bonus: Allie Beth Stuckey)

Introduction: Did Calvinism Begin with Augustine?

1. Augustine’s Importance to Calvinism

2. The Turning Point: Augustine’s Development Toward Determinism

Why does Wilson identify AD 412 as significant?

3. The Philosophical and Religious Background: Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Manichaeism

A. Stoicism: Meticulous providence and determinism

B. Neoplatonism: The corrupted will and the need for divine restoration

C. Gnosticism: A divinely differentiated humanity

D. Manichaeism: Inability and unilateral divine intervention

4. Augustine and the Five Points of TULIP

5. How the Five Points Fit Together

6. What About the Early Church Fathers?

7. From Augustine to Luther and Calvin

8. Does This Mean Calvinism Is Gnosticism or Manichaeism?

9. The Provisionist Alternative: Grace Without Theological Determinism

Conclusion: Examining the Foundation Rather Than Merely the System

Debating the Causal Chain | Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon

Reformational Determinism Undermines the Christian Witness

Sproul’s View of Double Predestination (Logical Consequences)

Jonah’s ‘Irresistible Message’ vs. Noah’s ‘Passed Over’ Preaching

Why Both Atheists and Christians Need to Believe in Free Will

Calvinist’s Hiding Their Dreadful Decree Behind the Good News

Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom (Shedd vs. Laws of Logic)

A Recent Sermon Maligning God’s Character/Holiness

Calvinism’s God Is Too Small | Planes and Boats Edition

The Flight

The Sailing

Quick Hits | Deuteronomy 30 – Jeremiah 32 – Isaiah 45