"But predestination!" (#5-6: Romans and sovereignty)
This is a series where I examine some things my Calvinist ex-pastor preached about predestination. Click on these for the pastor's sermons ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments 1-4 (election) and 7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine) and 10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015) and 12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again) and 15 (total depravity, manipulation) and 16A (God's Will, babies) and 16B (sin, evil, suffering) and 17 (double-speak and the gospel).
Fifth:
Like this pastor does, Calvinists constantly - all the time, over and over again, in every sermon on this topic - quote Romans 9:18: “Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”
They love this verse and the word “hardens.” They say it means that God decides who will go to heaven and who won’t, and that He hardens those whom He’s predestined for hell so that they can’t believe in Him.
[This is strange, though, because supposedly Calvi-Jesus never died for them anyway and Calvi-god won’t give them Calvi-Holy-Spirit to “wake them up” and make them believe... and so it's already totally impossible for them to believe in Calvi-god from the beginning. And so why would he need to harden their hearts too? Or make sure the truth is stolen/hidden from them (Mark 4:15, 2 Cor. 4:4)? Would they be able to somehow override Calvi-god's sovereign, pre-ordained, go-to-hell plans for them if these extra measures weren't taken? Strange. And it actually reflects kinda badly on Calvi-god's sovereign power, as if creating people to be non-believers is not enough to keep them in hell, as if he's afraid they might somehow break out of hell and make it to heaven if he doesn't take these other excessive precautions too.]
But if you look up “hardens” in Strong's concordance with Vine's Expository Dictionary, it says that Romans 9:18 (look under C-2, verb, G4645) is about a "retributive" hardening from God. It's punishment from God for first hardening our own hearts, for continually resisting Him even though He's been longsuffering with us. When someone hardens themselves against God, either by rejecting Him or by intentionally ignoring/refusing Him, He can make their decision permanent, solidifying the condition they first chose to be in.
This is what He did with Pharaoh. Pharaoh hardened his own heart for the first five plagues … and then God made it permanent and worked it into His plans. But make no mistake: Pharaoh chose it first, again and again.
And we can also see "retributive hardening" in Romans 1:18-2:5: “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. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened... Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind... But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed."
The people deliberately and willfully resisted God and went their own way, and so their hearts and minds became darkened and God gave them over to their self-chosen hardness and depravity. This is the biblical pattern: God calls to us, then we chose how to respond to Him, and then He responds to our choice (and He can make our self-chosen hardness permanent, if He wants):
“All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations – people who continually provoke me to my very face …” (Isaiah 65:2-3)
“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.” (Matthew 23:37)
“yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:40)
"See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God…. so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness… Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts...” (Hebrews 3:12-15)
“But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God. They rejected his decrees and the covenant he made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless…” (2 Kings 17:14-15)
"But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or [the Lord]. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the Lord Almighty." (Zechariah 7:11-13)
"But they were broken off because of unbelief ... And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in ..." (Romans 11:20,23)
Romans, especially Romans 9, is not about God randomly predestining some people for heaven and hardening others for hell. If you read it in context, it’s about God having the right to respond to our choices accordingly, to give us the consequences that go with our choices... and the right to decide whom to use for special purposes and whom to use for common purposes (God chose Israel - Jacob, not Esau - to be Jesus's bloodline and the nation that spreads the gospel to the world)... and the right to change His plans for us in response to our decisions (Israel was supposed to be the initial gospel-spreaders but they rejected it, and so God extend the gospel and salvation to the Gentiles who did want it, replacing Israel as the gospel-spreaders for now, until after the rapture of the Church).
Romans 9 does not support Calvinist predestination.
And since we're in Romans 9 - the BIG chapter for Calvinists - here are three other verses in Romans that Calvinists wrongly use to support their unbiblical definition of election/predestination:
In his June 26, 2016 sermon on Romans, my ex-pastor used Romans 9:19 ("One of you will say to me, 'Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?'") to "prove" that Romans 9 is about the Calvinistic predestination of individuals to heaven or hell, because - as he claims - the ‘Is God unjust’ question implied in Romans 9:19 only makes sense if Paul is talking about predestination. The pastor said that if it wasn’t about God predestining who goes to heaven or hell, then there’d be no reason to question God’s justice. (Notice that he's using his own logic and reasoning here to support his interpretation of Scripture.)
But I say that we don't have to believe Romans 9 is about Calvinist predestination in order to make sense of it. We just have to have a proper interpretation of Romans 9 (which Calvinists don't) - and then it will make sense on its own. (If your theology makes God appear to be an untrustworthy, unjust, contradictory monster who preplans/causes/is glorified by evil - after commanding us not to do evil - and then your theology tries to "fix" its contradictory dilemmas with some form of "But just don't think about it, don't question God; just accept that it's true even if it damages God's character and doesn't make sense" then you really ought to doubt the biblical-ness of your theology.)
Calvinists misunderstand Romans 9, leading to other questions, errors, "mysteries," and contradictions that they must then try to solve... and then those solutions create even more questions, errors, "mysteries," and contradictions that need to be solved... and so on and so forth. And as they dig their Calvinist holes deeper and deeper, their systematic theology books get longer and longer.
Do you really think God intended months and months of studying Calvinist theology books in order to understand His Word and the gospel? Was He so unclear in His Word - so incapable of speaking clearly or making sense - that He needed Calvinist men to come along hundreds and thousands of years later to explain it better?
In addition to Romans 9:19 ("Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"), Calvinists will use Romans 9:21 ("Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?") to support Calvinist predestination, to "prove" that God has the right to create some people for heaven and some for hell.
But once again, neither of those verses are about Calvinist predestination because that's not what Paul is talking about. It's about how God chooses to use people, not save people. What Paul is telling the Jews in Romans 9 is that although God chose the Jews to have a special role in bringing Jesus and the gospel to the world (the gospel was given to the Jews first so that they would spread it to the world), He has decided to take that special role from them because they rejected Jesus and the gospel and to give it to the Gentiles instead because they wanted it. God opened up the door of salvation to the Gentiles and transferred to them the job of spreading the gospel because the Jews rejected it (until the Tribulation, when God will again turn His attention back to the Jews so that they will become His focus and main missionaries again. God's promises and plans don't fail; He just adjusts them as He needs to, incorporating our decisions along the way.).
And the Jews essentially cried "But that's not fair! How could God choose to pass over, to punish, natural-born Jews and to favor Gentiles instead? How could He give them the promises and blessings that belonged to us?" They thought that God shouldn't bless the Gentiles like that or punish His favored people, the Jews. They thought they should get preferential treatment just because of who they are. And Paul responds by saying that God can use us however He wants to, based on what we do and how we respond to Him.
Romans 9 is about Paul answering the "It's not fair" cry, telling the Jews that God can use people the way He wants to for His plans, that if the Gentiles were willing to receive the gospel and obey Him but the Jews weren't, then God can shift the blessings and promises to the Gentiles and adopt them into His family, giving them the special role that was supposed to be for the Jews (spreading the gospel). God has the right to give some people noble jobs and to give others common jobs, based on our choices. And we have no right to say that He's wrong in His decision about this.
And don't forget that there are at least two other places in the Bible that talk about the potter and the clay or about vessels for noble or ignoble use - and neither have to do with God predestining someone's salvation. Let's see what we learn from them:
Jeremiah 18: God shows Jeremiah a potter who was shaping a pot, but the clay was marred (notice that the potter didn't mar the clay) and so he shaped it into a different pot that would better fit the clay's condition. Likewise, God says that He can plan something for people, but then He can change His plans for people based on what they do or don't do. This is contrary to Calvinism which teaches that God preplans everything to happen the way it does and that He doesn't base His decisions on our decisions.
2 Timothy 2:20-21: Like Romans 9:21, this also talks about some vessels in a house being for noble purposes and some being for ignoble purposes (this is not about salvation but about God using people for different purposes/jobs, based on what kind of people they are). This passage also contradicts Calvinism in that it says that "If a man cleanses himself from [being ignoble], he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy..." This shows that the decision to be how we are - to be fit for noble or ignoble purposes - lies with us, not with God. We choose how we will be and how we will respond to God's calls/laws, and then He will use us accordingly. He does not make us be one way or other, but we choose which way to be and then He finds a way to use us in His plans. And so if we want to be sinful, rebellious people, He lets us be that way and finds a way to work it into His plans. But if we want to be fit for "noble purposes," we must make decisions to live in such a way that God will use us for noble purposes. We affect whether or not we are used for noble purposes or for ignoble purposes, based on whether or not we cleanse ourselves from being “ignoble.” God doesn’t do it for us and hasn’t pre-decided it. He responds according to our choices.
And a third Romans 9 verse that Calvinists use to support Calvinist predestination is Romans 9:22 (NIV): “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction?”
Calvinists use this to "prove" that God predetermined who would go the hell, that He prepared certain people for destruction from the beginning of time. And, yes, "prepared for destruction" could definitely sound like God created certain people specifically so that He could destroy them… until you look it up in Strong's concordance with Vine's Expository dictionary.
In the King James, the word is not “prepared” but “fitted.” And according to the concordance, “fitted” indicates a strong correlation between someone’s character and their destiny. It’s written in such a way to imply that the objects of wrath prepared themselves for destruction. So it’s not that God made them that way; it’s that they made themselves that way by how they chose to live and be. We fit ourselves for destruction - or not - by how we choose to live and be. (This goes along with the potter and clay verses above.)
[Note: I have read Calvinists who agree that the verse means people "fit themselves" for destruction, but then they simply apply it by saying something like "See, so the non-elect deserve to be punished because they wanted to sin, making themselves fit for destruction." But this is NOT "making themselves fit for destruction." In Calvinism, God predestined them to hell, created them to be non-elect, created them with only the desire to sin and reject Jesus, gave them no ability to not sin and not reject Jesus, and orchestrates and directs their sin and rejection of Jesus. And so - by His design and control - they sin and reject Jesus. This does not fit the meaning of "fitted themselves." This is Calvi-god fitting them for destruction all the way, which contradicts what the verse is saying and how Calvinists apply it to the non-elect.]
Romans 9:22 is not saying that God creates some people for hell, but it's saying that God deals patiently with those who willingly choose to resist/reject Him because He can still use them to carry out His plans to bless others - which, in the case of Romans, it's about God dealing patiently with the Jews who reject Him because He can use them to help bring Jesus, the gospel, and salvation to the Gentiles, to the world.
Romans 9 is not a Calvinist chapter! It’s not about God predestining the salvation of individual people. But if you let Calvinists convince you it is, you will become a Calvinist too.
Sixth:
Likewise, if Calvinists can get you to accept their definition of "sovereignty" (God controls all things), you will accept their definition of predestination and will inevitably become a Calvinist too. (Also see "When Calvinists say 'But sovereignty!'".)
As he said in August 2015: "Why do some sinners believe and some don’t?... Because of God’s sovereign predestination, His sovereign election."
And in June 2016: "God is sovereign over salvation… So why do some respond [to the gospel]? It’s because God chose them and He summons them and awakens them to the gospel… And [His choice] had nothing to do with anything they did."
In September 2016: “Do we really believe our theology, that God is sovereign, that He controls every detail of the universe, that He knows the good from the bad, that He has ordained it in our lives.… God is all-powerful. He knows exactly what He is doing. He’s sovereign and in control of every detail of the universe, including our destinies.”
In February 2024: "The only way to get to heaven, says Jesus and the apostles, is if God chooses to give someone new life... It is a sovereign gift of God given to some."
And additionally, the pastor's adult Calvinist son preached this in February 2019: "God is in control... The whole testimony of Scripture is that human sin, angelic sin, disease, disaster, tragedy, plague, suffering, elation and celebration are all under the control of God, all ordained by God, and all accomplished by the sovereign Lord... [Some of you] cannot get past the troubling implications of this doctrine.... The doctrine of God's sovereignty is not an easy one for me either... For one thing, if God is in control in the way I believe the Bible teaches it must mean that I am not in control. And my sinful little self does not want to be told that. It turns out my sinful little self is quite infatuated with autonomy... The doctrine of God's sovereignty collides with my delusional love of me... If God has chosen you for salvation, He will make you holy... And if you defy Him, the furnace of affliction will not be pleasant. He may hide His face from you or rob you of your joy. He may oppress you with an illness or torment you with a bodily injury. He may destroy your career or put you in dire financial straits. He may afflict your spouse with a disease or snatch life from your children. GOD...WILL...MAKE...YOU...HOLY!"
I think Calvinists view "God is sovereign" as their trump card, their ace-in-the-hole that they pull out whenever they need an automatic win - because no good, humble Christian will deny God's sovereignty. (Isn't it funny, though, how Calvinist always play the "God is sovereign" card mostly only when they're trying to get you to buy into their belief that God predestines people to heaven or hell and that He "fore-ordains" sin, evil, and tragedy?)
But did you know that the word "sovereign/sovereignty" isn't even in the King James Bible anywhere, despite the fact that Calvinists build their whole theology around their definition of it? (I think the KJV is the most reliable, least corrupted translation.)
And in other translations like the NIV, it's mostly in a title like "the Sovereign Lord"... King Jesus. But nowhere does it define sovereignty as God predetermining or controlling all things. It's a title referring to God's position of authority over all, not a description about how God must control all.
To be "in control over all" (biblical) is far different than "to control all" (Calvinist). God is in control over all - watching over all and deciding what to allow or not allow, what the consequences of our choices should be, how to work our choices into His plans, etc. - but this does not mean that He preplans/controls all things. That is an unbiblical leap Calvinists make.
[And just because He does preplan/control some things doesn't mean He preplans/control all things - another unbiblical leap Calvinists make. And another one is when they decide that since God caused/controlled some natural evils in the Bible like storms or illnesses, it must mean He also causes/controls all moral evils, like sin, murder, abuse, etc. But causing a natural evil does not violate a command He gave, whereas causing a moral evil does. These are two very different things, and Calvinists destroy God's character, Word, and trustworthiness when they make a huge unbiblical leap from one to the other.]
Question: If God preplans and controls all things that happen, why are these verses in the Bible:
The thing is, God is big enough, wise enough, and powerful enough to allow real free-will choices that He didn't want or preplan, and still find ways to incorporate them into His plans.
But Calvi-god can only handle the factors that he alone preplans, causes, creates, controls. As R.C. Sproul says (Does God Control Everything?): “If God is not sovereign, God is not God. If there is even one maverick molecule in the universe – one molecule running loose outside the scope of God’s sovereign ordination – we cannot have the slightest confidence that any promise God has ever made about the future will come to pass.”
Now, if Sproul was talking about molecules that God can't control, that are stronger than Him, or that have escaped the realm of His authority, then, yes, I would agree. But Calvinists are not just talking about God being in authority over all molecules, but about God controlling all molecules. And so Sproul is saying that if there was even one molecule - one speck of dust - that God didn't actively control every movement of, then He wouldn't be a sovereign, all-powerful, trustworthy God.
But I say that God can choose to voluntarily limit the amount of active control He exerts over something. He can decide to give molecules and people freedom to move and make decisions within boundaries, and yet still be a sovereign, all-powerful God who works His plans out somehow, wisely incorporating whatever we do into His plans.
It's Calvinists who limit Him and box Him in, who decided that He has to act the way they say a "sovereign" God should act... or else He's not a sovereign God.
But a God who could be dethroned by one rogue molecule is no God at all!
(And it's ironic that Calvinists can't trust a God who allows free-will, but they think they can trust Calvi-god who first preplans sin, then commands us not to sin, then causes us to sin, and then punishes us for sinning. They think they can trust a god like that to keep his promises!?! Insane. Scary.)
Of course, God is sovereign, just not in the way Calvinists think. "Sovereign" is about the position of authority God has over all, that He is the highest authority there is and is answerable to no one. But Calvinists have decided that "sovereign" is about what God does in His position of authority, believing that He has to preplan, cause, control everything, even sin and evil and who believes, or else He's not God.
Listen to Leighton Flowers at Soteriology 101 describe the difference between the Calvinist understanding of sovereignty and the biblical understanding of it: "Sovereignty: In Control or Controlling" (2 minutes long) and "Sovereignty de-Calvinized" (11 minutes long) and "How Calvinists get sovereignty wrong" (11 minutes long).
And here are a couple sermons from Tony Evans (my favorite, most trusted pastor) to get a better, biblical idea of how God acts and what He expects from people, such as:
"How to get your prayers answered" - where he teaches a biblical view of God's "two Wills," unlike Calvinism's contradictory "two Wills." In Calvinism, God says He wills one thing, but then He has a secret, unspoken Will that really wants and predestined the opposite thing. Such as, Calvi-god says he wants all people to be saved, but his unspoken Will is that he wants and predestines most people to go to hell.
But Dr. Evans teaches a biblical view of "two Wills": God has an Unconditional Will about some things (the things He decided to do regardless of us), and He has a Conditional Will about other things (the things He decided to do but only in response to what we choose, only if we do our part first). This is not contradictory because it's not about God having two opposing plans for the same situation (as Calvinism does) - but it's about God having two different kinds of plans for two different circumstances: In some situations, He does things regardless of us (on no conditions), but in other situations, He bases what He does on us and our choices (on conditions).
And His Conditional Will is where we get the "if you...then..." Bible verses from - such as "If you obey, then I will bless you" and "If you believe, then I will save you." God has decided that there are some things He will do for us only on the condition that we do our part first. And anyone can. He promises certain things, but leaves it up to us to decide if we want to fulfill or not fulfill the conditions to get those promises. And this is how it is with salvation. He promises to save anyone who puts their faith in Jesus - and anyone can - but He leaves it up to us to decide if we want to do that or not. This is not contradictory (as Calvinism is); it's conditional.
And "Connecting with God for a breakthrough" - about how important prayer (and obedience) is because God doesn't always intervene in our circumstances unless we want Him to and call on Him. God has set certain natural laws in motion in the world and has given mankind a certain level of dominion and autonomy, and though God can intervene any time He wants to, He doesn't always, or even often, intervene unless called upon. This totally contradicts the Calvinist idea that God meticulously controls everything and that everything happens exactly as God preplanned it to.
(Question: If God controls every movement of everything, why does He create boundaries, such as boundaries for what Satan can do to Job in Job 1 and boundaries for the sea in Job 38:11? Boundaries are only needed when there's freedom to move within those boundaries.)
Can you imagine how different Calvinist prayers would be if - instead of believing that God preplans/controls/causes everything to happen the way it does and nothing we do will change it - they believed that God has given us a certain level of influence over what happens or doesn't happen and that our prayers/choices (or lack of prayers) really do affect what happens? (Also see "Understanding God's Will, with notes on Calvinism".)
Compared to Calvinism, Dr. Evans' views and teachings square much more with a simple, plain, commonsense understanding of the Bible and God's character. That's why I like and trust him so much.
(Comments 7-9 coming next)
