"But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!"
If you point out to Calvinists that Calvinism's view of sovereignty - that God fore-ordains and orchestrates everything that happens and we had no ability to do anything differently - makes God the cause (and truly the only voluntary cause) of all sin and evil, they'll probably respond with something like "That's not what we're saying. You're putting words in our mouths. And you don't understand Calvinism."
When they do that, show them a few of these quotes - Calvinists' own words about their beliefs of God's sovereignty and how He preplans, will, ordains, orchestrates, directs (code words for "causes") everything that happens. And then ask them if they still think you're really misunderstanding them. (Bold emphasis added)
[And before reading the quotes, here's a great, satirical 4-minute video that I think everyone should see: Hitler and Calvinism. Awesome!
And if you haven't yet, see the "reddit reformed" post that featured my post that you're reading right now. And then see my response to it: Thank you, reddit/reformed. I'm honored!]
1. R.C. Sproul Jr. (Almighty Over All): “God wills all things that come to pass"
[This section was updated 12/31/2025: Before I get to the rest of the quotes in this list, I'm gonna comment on this one at length, including even more Calvinist quotes as I follow the white rabbit down his hole. (Skip it if you want. I know it's really long.) I want to do this to provide a much fuller picture of the horrifying things Calvinism really teaches and why it's wrong. And then I'll get to the rest of their horrifying quotes.
I think one huge way Calvinists go wrong is that they misunderstand "God's Will." They assume that God's Will must always happen, that He always gets what He wants, and so therefore everything that happens is "His Will," what He wanted and planned and caused.
But they are wrong. Biblically, when it comes to our lives and choices, God's Will isn't about preplanning, wanting, causing everything that happens. (Yes, God has some overarching plans for mankind that He will work out one way or another, but He does this by incorporating our choices and maybe even by forcing us to make the choice He knows we'll make, but not by preplanning or causing the choice we make. He causes all things to work together - not preplans/causes all things - to fulfill His overarching plans.)
But according to Strong's Concordance/HELPS Word-studies, “God's Will" (especially in verses about what He wants for us and from us) is about His “desire/preferred Will; His 'best offer' to people which can be accepted or rejected; the result hoped for with the particular desire/wish.” It's about what God desires for us and from us, how He wants us to live, not about a pre-set plan that must/will happen.
Just wondering, but if Calvinists believe that God always does His Will no matter what and that whatever happens is "His Will"... and yet, in reality and biblically, it's really our responsibility/choice to find out what His Will is (in His Word), to pray for His Will to get done, and to choose to obey it... then how often does God's Will really go undone in the lives of Calvinists, when they're shirking their responsibility to do their part because they're assuming that God does it all? Hmm.
God has desires/opinions about how He wants us to live, what He wants for us, and how He wants to bless us and use us in His plans. But He does not force it. He tells us what He wants and expects, but He lets us choose to obey or disobey. He lets us decide if we are in His Will or not, if we fulfill His Will or not.
This explains how and why His Will doesn't always happen (such as His Will/desire that all people are saved, that we give thanks in all circumstances, that all orphans and widows are taken care of, etc.). And so not everything that happens is "His Will" or what He wanted. Many bad things happen because we resist, refuse, disobey His Will.
Calvinism's misunderstanding of what "God's Will" means has led to massive errors in their theology, massive errors in their understanding of why things happen, how things get done, what God's role/responsibility is, what our role/responsibility is, who Jesus died for, and how we get to heaven. (As you'll see in the following comments.)
And it's done an enormous amount of damage to people's hearts and faith, especially when they're told by Calvinists that "It's God's Will" that they were mistreated, abused, cheated on, divorced, hurt by others, that they got cancer or a disease, that their children were injured or handicapped, that they lost their job or lost their home in a natural disaster, and other things like that.
I mean, seriously... Imagine being the family of the 10-year-old girl who was kidnapped, tortured, raped, and strangled to death... and then hearing R.C. Sproul Jr. proclaim that God ordained it to happen and that your little girl "received the judgment from God she had earned." So according to Sproul Jr. (I'd add some adjectives to his name, but that wouldn't be very Christian of me), her violent abuse and murder was God's Will for that child, "ordained" by God as "justice" for her sins. (Watch The Church Split's video: "Calvinism's Most DISTURBING claim yet: This Is Monstrous Theology".)
Likewise, a Calvinist in a clip in an Idol Killer video ("Why Calvinist Apologetics FAIL") responds to an atheist's comment about God not feeding starving children with "Yes, thanks for pointing out the obvious. We also recognize that those children don't deserve any food. They deserve much worse for their sins. They should repent and believe the gospel." And so, apparently, it's God Will if they starve to death. They "deserve" it, and so much worse.
And Papa John Calvin would agree (from Institutes of the Christian Faith, book 1, chapter 16): "... some mothers have full provision for their infants, and others almost none, according as it is the pleasure of God to nourish one child more liberally, and another more sparingly."
So Calvi-god ordains the torture, rape, and strangulation of babies and children and is pleased to cause starvation. All of this is "his Will" for them.
And why?
It's Calvi-justice. They "deserve" it for their sins.
Because they're wicked and depraved to their core!
My ex-pastor's January 2016 sermon on the wrath of God: "Truth-suppression begins very early in life. Children have no interest in truth…zero. Babies, toddlers, cute little kids, my cute grandkids, they have no interest in the truth. What is a child’s primary interest in life? ME! It’s the All-Great Universe of ME! They don’t want to know the truth. Frankly, I think if they were big enough, sometimes they would vaporize us. If you look at the rage in a child, toddler, baby that is screaming because you’re imposing truth on them… Why am I born such a good truth-suppressor? Because I’m born sinful. Not just a little bit, we are born incredibly depraved to our core… desperately wicked. We are slaves to sin… We are born rebellious, and we don’t want authority over us… the heart is desperately wicked… deceitful above all things...” (Oh, those horrible little wretched babies!)
Paul Washer (from the sermon "Not Ashamed of the Gospel")": "I submit to you that if that 18-month-old baby had the strength of an 18-year old man, he would slaughter you there where you stand, father, rip the watch off your arm and walk across your bloody body and out the door without feeling an ounce of remorse."
Voddie Baucham (from this sermon about total depravity): “People who don’t believe in original sin don’t have children… That’s a viper in a diaper... One of the reasons God makes them so small is so that they won’t kill you. And one of the reasons he makes them so cute is so that you won’t kill them.”
R.C. Sproul (from Idol Killer's video Evil and Depraved - the Reformed View of Children): "Calvin was once talking about babies and said that babies are as depraved as rats. And I said that's the one time I really really oppose the teaching of John Calvin...because that's terribly insulting to the rat."
John MacArthur (from The Distinctive Qualities of the True Christian, Part 1): "Nowhere, or at no point, is a man's depravity more manifest than in the procreative act... How do we know man is a sinner at the root of his existence? The answer: by what he creates. Whatever comes from the loins of man is wicked because man is wicked. So I say to you that nowhere then in the anatomy of man or in the activity of man is depravity more manifest than in the procreative act... because it is at precisely that point which he demonstrates the depth of his sinfulness because he produces a sinner." (And yet, contradictorily, MacArthur claims that he believes that babies - the wicked, depraved, sinful fruit of vile human procreation - go to heaven if they die. How does he square that circle!?!😕)
My ex-pastor's March 2017 sermon about why there's suffering and evil in the world (referring to Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs): "The secular assumption is that ‘normal’ people – whatever that means – don’t do things like that. They’re not cannibals and sadistic killers. Something went wrong with him. That’s a secular assumption…[because] from birth we’re born corrupt and evil. And so it’s a secular assumption to think that something has to happen to make us really evil. Any of us are capable of that kind of horrific evil. Hannibal Lector answers [the question 'What made you like this?'] very biblically... ‘Nothing happened to me. I just am. I’m evil.' That’s the biblical worldview... This is why infants, children, and toddlers disobey by nature... It’s why they need spankings."
(So we can spank the "total depravity" right out of them? Spank Calv-election into them? Spank them enough to influence or change whatever Calvi-god predestined for them?)
And so now, according to Calvinism, what happens to all those spanked, starved, tortured, strangled babies and children?
Well, if they're not one of the Calv-elect, then it's Calvi-god's Will that they go to hell of course, for being such wicked, depraved sinners. Because even if they didn't do any sins of their own yet, they're still guilty for Adam's sin and so they deserve eternal damnation.
{To be fair, not all Calvinists are this extreme. Some of them probably aren't even aware - don't want to be aware - of what Calvinism really teaches, the terrible bottom-line. Some won't say the dark parts out loud, or even to themselves. And some Calvinists really do believe that people are truly responsible for their sins and that all/some babies go to heaven.
But to be honest, any Calvinist who claims that Calvi-god isn't the cause of sin and that babies go to heaven is being totally inconsistent with his theology. Calvinism itself is incompatible with the idea that anyone else but God is truly responsible for sin and the idea that babies go to heaven, no matter how Calvinists try to spin it. See the post "In consistent Calvinism, babies cannot be saved.")}
John Calvin (Institutes, book 3, chapter 23): "... individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction."
From Calvin's Institutes, book 2, section 8: "Hence, even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect... their whole nature is, as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and therefore cannot but be odious and abominable to God. Hence it follows, that it is properly deemed sinful in the sight of God; for there could be no condemnation without guilt."
From Calvin's Harmony of the Law, Vol. 2, Deut. 13, paragraph 15: "If any should object that the little children were innocent, I reply that, since all are condemned by the judgment of God from the least to the greatest, we contend against Him in vain, even though He should destroy the very infants as yet in their mothers' wombs... Although we must recollect that God would never have suffered any infants to be destroyed, except those which he had already reprobated and condemned to eternal death." (Phew! What a relief!)
James White (start at 4:33 in the Idol Killer video "Does Calvinism Teach Babies are Elected for hell?"): "... [God] is going to have elect infants, and there are others who will not be."
Tim Challies ("Original sin and the death of infants"): "... in an article I wrote last week...[I] expressed my belief that my children (ages 6, 3, and 3 months) are, at this time, likely unsaved and are thus spiritually dead..."
R.C. Sproul Jr. would agree, as seen in part of his answer to the question "How would you advise a parent who concludes that one or more of their children are not among the elect?" (start at 1:12 in this video): "God has to, one at a time, give life to those who are His elect... I can tell you this, from the moment my wife and I find out we're pregnant, we pray that God would change their hearts then, knowing even in the womb our children are sinners and needed the grace of God."
Therefore, obviously, if a baby dies in the womb (or any time) without first being "regenerated," it dies as a hell-bound sinner. Just as Calvi-god willed it to be!
{A Calvinist named Joe responded to a similar question - "If you found out that God chose not to save one or more of your children, how would you feel about that?" - with this answer: "It means He's God... I sure hope that God has chosen my children...but if God chooses not to save my children, that is His prerogative because He is God and I am not God. He decides who's in His heaven. He decides who's in His hell... Okay, we've got two ways to look at this. This is a glass half-full or half-empty. Either I can rejoice that God chose a wretched sinner for salvation, which is me, or I can worry about God's choices with other wretched sinners. When I realize that the human nature and the human position against God is that I've sinned against an almighty God and that everyone deserves His judgment, I should be mystified, shocked, and stunned whenever He chooses anyone, not surprised when someone doesn't get chosen." (What kind of a god is Calvi-god that Calvinists are shocked that he'd love even one person enough to save them?😕 Watch the video of this conversation at Soteriology 101's "Warning: This may be the CRINGIEST video you watch about Calvinism". And then enjoy this 2-minute video featuring Calvinist Tyler Vela and Beaker from the Muppets, called "Me, me, me." FYI: Sadly, Tyler recently left the faith. But is it any wonder when we really understand what Calvinism teaches!)}
Vincent Cheung (“Infant Salvation”): “We insist that if infants can be saved, then only chosen infants are saved… Perhaps the same applies to those who are mentally retarded, although there seems to be no biblical evidence to say that some mentally retarded people are saved. Their salvation is only a possibility. It is also possible that all mentally retarded people are damned… [and] on the basis of the doctrine of reprobation, they would be created as damned individuals in the first place... The possibility [of salvation] does not apply to mentally aware infants, teenagers, and adults who never heard the gospel – they will all surely go to hell… If someone dies without hearing the gospel, it just means that God has decreed his damnation beforehand... This would mean that those who are unable to exercise faith are all damned to hell, and this would include infants and the mentally retarded, if we assume that they cannot exercise faith. I have no misgivings about this. (Phew! How wonderful that he can sleep easy at night, unconcerned with other people's damnation.) I have no problem with the idea that all who die as embryos, infants, and mentally retarded would burn in hell. If this is what God has decided, then this is what happens... As for the embryos, if they perish, they will go where God decides – if they all burn in hell, they all burn in hell…”
From Jonathan Edwards in "The Miscellanies", point n.: "... it is most just, exceeding just, that God should take the soul of a new-born infant and cast it into eternal torments... If you say, they [infants] have not deserved it so much, I answer: they certainly have deserved what they have deserved... Who shall determine just how much sin is sufficient to make damnation agreeable to the divine perfections? And how can they determine that infants have not so much sin? For we know they have enough to make their damnation very just."
My ex-pastor, from his June 28, 2015 sermon on hell: "The Bible says...we are born enemies of God and that we are in rebellion against God. You are in rebellion against God from the moment of conception. We inherit Adam and Eve's sin. We inherit their depravity."
From his August 2015 sermon on predestination: “How many sins does it take to be a sinner? The answer is zero because we’re born steeped in sin, because we inherit it from Adam and Eve and their rebellion. We call that the doctrine of internal depravity, inherited depravity."
From December 1, 2017: "Isaiah is telling us in very strong language, very clear language here, that our sins have cut us off from God, from the moment of conception, of birth, and then once we start committing sins, it even adds to it. They separate us from God... We are sinners by conception, then by birth."
From July 16, 2017: "From the moment of conception in the womb, we are desperately wicked, hopelessly selfish, in utter rebellion against God... The unsaved man, the unsaved woman, the unsaved child, the unsaved teen is cut off from God and under judgment... We are under a divine death sentence from the moment of conception, and unless something happens, we will face the living God [and] judgment and damnation."
From February 3, 2019: "Do you understand that hell is your default destination from the moment of conception?"
Calvi-god's Will: The starvation, kidnapping, torture, rape, and strangulation of babies and children... and their predestination to eternal hell, before they can even choose to commit any sins on their own, because it's "justice" for how depraved they are, how guilty they are for another person's sin.
What kind of a sick god is Calvi-god!?!
And what does it say about a person to love, trust, worship, and emulate a god like that?
(Find more quotes, along with these, in my post "As evil as it gets: Calvinism on babies and the unreached.")
But no! I do not agree with Calvinists that babies are born guilty for Adam's sin or that there are non-elect people predestined to hell, born "totally unable" to believe in God. I do not agree that "election" or "predestination" or "sovereign" is about God choosing who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I believe that we all make our own choice to believe in or reject Jesus - that we all have the ability/option to believe - and that we are judged on that basis. And so babies who never made it to an age where they can make their own choice are considered innocent, covered by God's grace. (See "Do babies go to heaven or hell? A critique of Calvinism's answer" and "TULIP's Totally-Depraved Doctrine" and "When Calvinists say, 'But predestination!")
I do not agree with Calvinists that regeneration precedes faith. But I believe that after we put our faith in Jesus, then we are regenerated and born again. (See "Quick answers: born again" and "'But predestination': 'dead,' regeneration, born again.")
I do not agree with Calvinists that "God ordains/causes everything that happens, even sin and evil" or that "allowing it to happen (not stopping it from happening) is the same as Him preplanning, wanting, decreeing, orchestrating it to happen." (They believe this because they mis-define "sovereignty.")
But I will say this: I do agree that God can cause some "bad" things to happen for a reason, such as maybe causing an illness or a storm (things we consider "bad" or unpleasant). But causing something like that isn't like causing sin and evil. He has no commands against storms/illness, but He does have commands against sin and evil. And so He can ordain/cause a storm without violating His commands or destroying His character, but He cannot ordain/cause sin and evil without violating His commands and destroying His character.
Sure, God causes some things (but never sin or evil, although He can work our self-chosen sin into His plans)... and, yes, He allows some things to happen "for a reason"... but I think there are plenty of other things that He just allows, with no "for a reason" attached (and maybe it's more often than not). He allows it to happen simply because He gave us, angels, demons, and nature a certain amount of room to move and act freely.
And so even if He does occasionally cause some unpleasant non-sin things, I think that most bad things happen not because God wanted/willed/planned it "for a reason," but simply because of the freedom He gave us. He allows people to have the free-will to make decisions that affect things (even bad, hurtful decisions that hurt others)... He allows demons and angels to make decisions that affect things... and He allows natural processes to run their courses within boundaries (which means that sometimes nature goes wrong, cells go wrong, wind currents go wrong, etc.).
There are a bunch of factors that affect why things happen that have nothing to do with "It was God's Will, what He ordained, planned, wanted, caused."
And so since God is not preplanning, controlling, or causing it all - but He has given us, demons/angels, and nature an awful lot of freedom to move and make decisions within boundaries - things will go wrong sometimes, against His Will. And the responsibility for things going wrong lies with us, Satan/demons, and the disruption of natural processes, not with God.
But, of course, our comfort comes from knowing that He is still over and above it all, even sinful and evil things He didn't cause or want. (Unlike Calvinism which says that it should be comforting to us that He ordains and causes the sinful, evil things! Very different!) He is watching over it all, trying to guide people to do the right thing, grieved when we do the wrong thing, hurting with us when bad things happen to us, and finding ways to turn the bad into good, to bring good out of it, even the things He didn't plan, want, will, cause.
I know that believing He "allowed" bad things can be just as devastating to people as thinking He caused it. But at least it means that He didn't want the pain, tragedy, injustice for us, that it wasn't His plan for us, that He takes no pleasure in it. At least it's because of the freedoms He gave us and nature, not because He wanted, planned, caused it. At least it means people are responsible for their sins, and not God. Because if God's responsible for sin and evil - if He causes people to commit the sins He told them not to commit and if He punishes them for irresistibly doing what He predestined them to do - then He cannot be trusted. And so to whom then could we go to for help or comfort when the tragedies hit us?
Calvinism's god is not a god to trust or love or feel truly loved by. But the true God of the Bible - who didn't want, plan, cause the sin or evil that He commands us not to do and punishes us for, but who simply allows people to make their own bad decisions - can still be trusted. He is not the planner or causer of the sin or evil. He did not want that sin or evil. And so we can trust Him. We can trust that He hurts with us when bad happens to us, that He will bring something good out of it, and that He will dish out justice in the end against those who do evil and who sinned against us. Because they chose to do it, against His Will.
This is just my two cents. And I wanted to add all this to create a fuller picture, with fuller answers, so that you can better evaluate the following quotes from Calvinists when they talk about Who they really think is truly responsible for all sin, evil, and suffering.]
2. Ligonier Ministries ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "We have to understand that God is sovereign over all. He orchestrates all things. He foreordains all things that come to pass."
3. J.I. Packer ("Predestination: God has a purpose"): "Predestination is a word often used to signify God’s foreordaining of all the events of world history, past, present, and future."
4. John Calvin (Institutes, book 3, chapter 23): "... it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he so ordained by his decree."
5. Gordon H. Clark (Predestination): “[Some people] do not wish to extend God’s power over evil things, and particularly over moral evils… [But] the Bible therefore explicitly teaches that God creates sin.”
6. A.W. Pink in Doctrine of Election: "Man is a moral agent, acting according to the desires and dictates of his nature: he is at the same time a creature, fully controlled and determined by his Creator." [In Calvinism, the desires of man's nature were determined by God, and man cannot change his nature but must act out those desires. This is how Calvinists can deceptively say "Man 'chooses' what he 'wants' to do, man 'willingly/voluntarily' sins because he 'wants' to sin, and so God doesn't 'force' him to do it, and so, therefore, man can be held responsible for it" even though Calvi-god predetermined, caused, orchestrated it all. It's no different than you giving someone a magic potion that gives them the desire to kill - and only the desire to kill, a desire they must act out - and then after they've killed people, you claim, "But I didn't force them to kill. I didn't hold their hand while they held the gun or pulled the trigger. They chose to pick up the gun and pull the trigger because they wanted to do it. And so they are responsible for it." It's hogwash.]
8. Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “All things that happen in all the world at any time and in all history… come to pass because God ordained them. Even sin– the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history… Foreordination means God’s sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe… He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen... He has foreordained everything… even sin...”
9. John MacArthur (Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God): "Well of course; [God] controls everything. He’s in complete control of evil. The devil is God’s devil; he’s totally controlled by God. The world is controlled by God. Every single movement, as R.C. said, of every molecule is controlled by God, and a whole lot of it is evil."
And more John MacArthur (Doctrine of Election, part 1), along the same lines: "In Revelation 19 we are told the Lord God reigns... What does it mean? It means he makes every decision that’s ever been made, essentially, about everything.... He is the decider and determiner of every person’s destiny, and the controller of every detail of every individual’s life."
11. John Calvin (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God): “... how foolish and frail [it is to suggest] that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission... It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them... Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for his mercy's sake, or to evil according to their merits... Of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him..."
12. John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapters 16-17):
"everything done in the world is according to His decree"
... “the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined"
... "the devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are, in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how much soever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as [God] permits - nay, unless in so far as he commands"
... "...God claims for himself the right of governing the world... [his will is] the most perfect cause of all things..."
13. Parsons, Ligonier Ministries ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "We have to understand that God is sovereign over all. He orchestrates all things. He foreordains all things that come to pass... God ordains the ends of all things as well as the means of those ends... He ordains our works, our deeds, what we do, what we say, what we believe, and the ends of those things... God is ultimately the One orchestrating all things. He is permitting, but He is permitting 'not by a bare permission' as the Westminster Confession states... Does God sovereignly, in some mysterious way, permit us to sin (though not by a bare permission)? Absolutely." ["Not by bare permission" means that God doesn't just allow us to make truly free-will choices. He doesn't merely foreknow and allow what we will choose. But it's that He only "permits" us to do what He first decreed/ordained us to do. This is why it's not "bare permission," mere permission, but "permission" of only that which He pre-planned and orchestrates.]
14. Erwin Lutzer (this quote was found at Examining Calvinism): "Calvinists pointedly admit that God ordains evil... we can say that God permitted evil, as long as we understand that he thereby willed that the evil happen... In a word, what God permits, he ordains." (The Doctrines That Divide, pg. 210)
15. Tom Hicks (Founders Ministries, "The Nature of God's Eternal Decree"): "God knows the future because He decrees the future."
16. Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology): "[Some people say] that if our choices are real, they cannot be caused by God... [But] It seems better to affirm that God causes all things that happen but that he does so in such a way that He somehow upholds our ability to make willing, responsible choices that have real and eternal results for which we are held accountable." ["Willing, responsible choices" does not mean "free-will choices" or "voluntary choices between possible options". It just means "choices we 'wanted' to make because God created us with a Will that could only desire to make those choices, and yet there will be real consequences and we will be punished/held responsible for them, even though He predestined/caused us to do them." As Grudem affirms, "Just as a rock is really hard because God has made it with the property of hardness, just as water is really wet because God has made it with the property of wetness, just as plants are really alive because God has made them with the property of life, so our choices are real choices with significant effects because God has made us in such a wonderful way that he has endowed us with the property of willing choice." All this hogwash means is that just as the rock, water, and plants had no control over or choice about how they were created and which properties they had, we have no control over or choice about the "willing choices" we make. They are not "free-will" choices; they're just the choices we "wanted" to make, were "willing" to make, because Calvi-god created us to be willing to make those choices - and only those choices - giving us no ability to change the desires of our wills. In Calvinism, we don't control our Wills, but our Wills - our God-determined Wills - control us.]
17. From my ex-pastor's April 22, 2018 sermon: "Nothing is operating outside of His sovereign decree. That means that nothing happens in the universe, not even in the origin of sin and evil, without God not only allowing it but ordaining it."
18. From my ex-pastor's July 2023 sermon on Hosea: "[The minor prophets emphasize] God's sovereignty, His absolute reign and jurisdiction, His ordaining of all things that come to pass, for His glory, over the nations, over rulers, over world events, and over our lives, that God foreordains anything that comes to pass..."
19. Jeff Durbin, talking to a woman about evils like gang rape (see clips of it in this review: The Madness of Calvinism, and the full video here: Jeff Durbin Answering 'The Problem of Evil'.): “God actually has a morally sufficient reason for all the evil He plans… nothing happens in the universe apart from His will… He actually decrees all things."
20. Theodore Zachariades (as seen in this clip from Soteriology 101): "God works all things after the counsel of His will, even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so... and when He wants to, He orders those to commit adultery when HE WANTS TO!"
21. Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason, and Revelation): “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do it… Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything…”
22. James White, in answer to the question [listen here]: “When a child is raped, is God responsible and did He decree that rape?”, says "... Yes, [He decreed it] because if not, then it's meaningless and purposeless..."
24. John Calvin said this in Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God: "... God may be free of guilt in doing the very thing that He condemns in Satan and the reprobate and which is to be condemned by men... For what man wickedly perpetrates, incited by ambition or avarice or lust or some other depraved motive, since God does it by His hand with a righteous though perhaps hidden purpose - this cannot be equated with the term sin. Sin in man is made by perfidy, cruelty, pride, intemperance, envy, blind love of self, any kind of depraved lust. Nothing like this is to be found in God." [Translation: "Our motives and natures determine if it's sin or not. And so what's sin for man and Satan is not sin for God because He doesn't have our sin nature and because the evils He ordains flow from His good character and pure motives, which makes it okay for Him, but not for us." What kind of bull-dung is this!?! I mean, seriously!?!
And furthermore, I have even read Calvinists who say that what we see as evil and injustice, God sees as good and justice - because He sees things differently than we do, because His thinking is higher than ours, blah, blah, blah. And so, according to them, our judgment can't be trusted, and so we just have to trust that any evil/injustice that Calvi-god does is actually good in his eyes.
As John MacArthur says in Doctrine of Election, part 1: "... we want to make it very clear that God is not to be measured by our understanding of what is just... God has ways and thoughts that are to us incomprehensible, unresolvable, inscrutable... he is holy... he is infinitely and perfectly just... he is morally flawless and perfect... And so whatever he says is just is what justice is.... And whatever it is that he wills is by definition just because he is just. It is just because he wills it. It is not because he sees that it is just that he wills it, it is that he wills it and then it becomes just."
But I ask: How in the world, then, can we obey any of His instructions to do good and not evil, to practice justice instead of injustice, when we can't tell the difference or recognize one over the other because, as the Calvinist says, there is no difference, because they're one on the same? Do you not see how this erases the line between good and evil, between God and Satan?
(Yes, there are things that God sees differently than we do, things we can't understand, things He hasn't revealed. But when it comes to the things God has revealed in His Word - the things He clearly calls wrong, sin, evil, injustice, etc. - then how dare people claim that, deep down, God didn't really mean what He said, that He really sees them as good, or that there really is ultimately no difference between what God says is good and what God says is evil because, to Him, it's all good as long as He supposedly, according to Calvinists, wanted it, decreed it, ordained it, caused it! How dare they!)
Contrary to Calvinists who say that whatever Calvi-god does - even sin and evil - is just and good just because he causes it, C.S. Lewis (love him, love him, love him!) says this in The Problem of Pain, chapter 6:
"It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them... I emphatically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion...that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it - that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that 'they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.' God's will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good. But when we have said that God commands things only because they are good, we must add that one of the things intrinsically good is that rational creatures should freely surrender themselves to their Creator in obedience. The content of our obedience - the thing we are commanded to do - will always be something intrinsically good, something we ought to do even if (by an impossible supposition) God had not commanded it."
And contrary to Calvinists who try to excuse their idea that it's okay for God to cause sin and evil by saying that God and humans view things differently and so we can't really tell the difference between good and evil - that what's evil in our eyes might actually be good in God's eyes, even if He commands against it in His Word - Lewis says this in chapter 2: "if God's moral judgment differs from ours so that our 'black' may be His 'white,' we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say 'God is good,' while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say 'God is we know not what'. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) 'good' we shall obey, if at all, only through fear - and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity - when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is simply nothing - may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship."
Amen and amen!
If there is no real, clear dividing line between true good and true evil - if (as Calvinism claims) good can be evil and evil can be good, and whatever God does becomes good even if it's evil - then we cannot call anything good or evil, and we cannot even call God Himself good.
"Good" loses all meaning when it looks and acts just like evil or when it's used as an excuse for evil. The words "good and evil" become meaningless when they can mean the same as their opposites.
Calvinism erases the line between good and evil, which essentially erases the line between God and Satan, lowering God to Satan's level and, consequently, elevating Satan to God's level. (And who do you think wants this to happen? Who benefits from it? I'll give you a hint: 😈)
(Why in the world do Calvinists keep quoting Lewis!?!)]
25. From a Soteriology 101 post called "Frustrated by the state of the world?", non-Calvinist Fromoverhere asked: "But in Calvinism, yesterday's abortion was what God wanted or it would not have happened. Simple question to you Calvinists: Were yesterday's abortions in your city what God wanted?"
The Calvinist Filemon responded with “The answer is Yes... Now using the negative logic, I ask you, ‘If God hadn’t wanted this abortion to happen, do you think it would ever have happened?’ And as evil as it is, the abortion was no more evil than the death of Jesus, which was the worst sin ever committed on earth. And I ask you, ‘Who did plan this death and who controlled everything and everybody to fulfil His plan?’" [Hmm, sounds to me like he's admitting God causes sin. And notice that he calls what Calvinism's god wanted "evil," and so what does that say about Calvinism's god? And for the record, God can work our self-made decisions into His plans without preplanning/causing/controlling our decisions. Only in Calvinism does He have to control our decisions in order to make His plans work out.]
Rhutchin (another Calvinist) affirms Filemon: “Even Fromoverhere knows that God is always present at every abortion and has the power to stop any abortion at any time. It is God’s choice to have the abortion continue, and because God chooses for the abortion to continue, we say that the abortion was God’s will. Calvinists say that God made this decision before He created the world so that it was part of His decree to create.” [A false inference Calvinists make: that because God didn't stop an evil, it means He wanted it and planned it. It's bad theology built on their bad presuppositions and incorrect definitions of things like sovereignty, God's Will, etc.]
26. From my ex-pastor's August 2022 sermon on suffering and God's love: "[Atheists] argue that the sheer amount of suffering, brutality, carnage, violence, and misery on our planet rule out a loving God... [But] what is the Bible's perspective on God and suffering?... God is all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and He doesn't owe us any explanations... [God's] providence means He's all-powerful, all-wise, and He governs all things... But providence is more than God just having advanced knowledge... God's providence means His sovereign, wise leading and active directing of all things for His glory, and of all events, everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly."
27. Mark Talbot/John Piper (editor) (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, page 42-44, 70-77. This is a long quote but one you need to read - and I mean really read. Especially you Calvinists. Repeat it, ruminate on it, stew in it. It's Calvinism in a nutshell. Calvinism at its finest! Share it with your Calvinist friends. Read it aloud at your next Bible study. Quote it to your neighbors. Tell it to your sweet little children as a bedtime story. See if you Calvinists can proudly and confidently proclaim this as biblical truth without tripping over your words and gagging on your own vomit.): "God brings about all things in accordance with his will. It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those that love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects… This includes God’s having even brought about the Nazi’s brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Nadar and even the sexual abuse of a young child... God speaks and then brings his word to pass; he purposes and then does what he has planned. Nothing that exists falls outside of God's ordaining will. Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God's foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events. And so it is not inappropriate to take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil.
... In summary, this means that we should affirm the age-old Christian doctrine of God’s complete providence over all. God has sovereignly ordained, from before the world began, everything that happens in our world... It should be beyond all doubt that no one suffers anything at anyone else’s hand without God having ordained that suffering.
During his first hour or so in Birkenau, Elie Wiesel saw the notorious Joseph Mengele...casually directing [people] either to his left, so that they went immediately to the gas chambers, or to his right to the forced-labor camp. In seeing Mengele, Wiesel was seeing a very evil man whom, nevertheless, God was actively sustaining and governing, nanosecond by nanosecond, through his evil existence. And we can be sure that, from before time began, God had ordained that at that place those moments would be filled with just those persons, doing and suffering exactly as they did... that he actually brought the whole situation about, guiding and governing and carrying it by his all-powerful and ever-effectual word to where it would accomplish exactly what he wanted it to do.
[Footnote: Mengele was a medical doctor who was nicknamed 'The Angel of Death.' He carried out unspeakable experiments on some of his prisoners, including injecting chemicals into children’s eyes in an attempt to change their eye color from brown to the preferred Aryan blue. He would visit the children, acting kindly and bringing them candy and clothing in order to keep them calm and happy, and then transport them in what looked like a Red Cross truck or in his personal vehicle to his laboratory beside the crematoria where he would perform his horrible experiments and then burn their bodies. He specialized in experiments involving identical twins. He was intrigued to see if he could make them differ genetically by, among other horrors, performing sex-change operations on one of them or removing one twin’s limbs or organs in macabre surgical procedures that were performed without the use of anesthesia and that had no scientific basis or value.]
... Even though he ordains all of our free sinful choices, those sinful choices still 'count' and we are held responsible for them.... In ordaining the evil works of others, he himself does no wrong, 'upright and just is he.'... We can be sure, as Scripture confirms, that God has made everything for its purpose, even evil persons like Joseph Mengele or Dennis Rader. We can be sure that God has made our lives’ most evil moments as well as their best....
... I myself find it very difficult to understand how [God can ordain evil for our good] with some of the worst things that human beings do, like sexually abusing young children or raping or torturing someone mercilessly. And, of course, something much less horrible than these sorts of things can happen to us and still leave us wondering how God could be ordaining it for our good. I have seen marriages break apart after thirty-five years and felt to some degree the grief and utter discombobulation of the abandoned spouse. I have watched tragedies unfold that seem to remove all chance for any more earthly happiness.... Many of us have tasted such grief....Yet these griefs have been God’s gifts.... [And in the end, when we see Jesus face-to-face] we will see that God has indeed done all that he pleased and has done it all perfectly, both for his glory and our good..."
28. From my ex-pastor's August 2015 sermon about God "ordaining" suffering: "[Some people] say that evil and suffering are the result of [free-will choices]... [But] God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives. [When Calvinists say "God is in control of everything," they mean "God controls everything," which is very different.]
... [We] rush to get God off the hook for human suffering [by saying things like] 'Well, this is not what He really intended; this is not really Plan A.'... And every time we do that, God puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'I am in charge, thank you, and I will run the universe as I see fit, and I don't owe you an explanation.'
... Are you trusting God in the midst of your past, present, and future in whatever He has ordained and appointed for you as far as suffering, tragedy, abuse, or trials or difficulties or illness or disease or betrayal?... Or are you murmuring against Him?
... You may get an answer someday about why you were abused or why you lost a child or why a spouse walked away. ["You may get answer why" is another way of saying "God might tell you why He deliberately did it to you."]
... Do you perhaps need to repent of your murmuring and the chip on your shoulder against God, and surrender today and say 'Lord, I don't understand the way You run the universe, and I don't necessarily like it, but You're God and You're good.'... Find refuge and hope in a good and holy God who says 'I have all things under My control. Everything that's going on in your life, or has gone on in your life, or will, I know about and have ordained for you. And you can find comfort and hope and trust Me.'" [Brilliant manipulative-shaming! So first he tells people that God preplanned and caused them to be abused or cheated on, and then he shames them for being upset about it, accusing them of sinning against God.]
30. From my ex-pastor's September 13, 2020 sermon on God being in control:"[The doctrine of God's providence] is a huge source of comfort to the people of God because it is a regular reminder that whatever's going on in our lives, even if it's painful, it is being directed by an all-knowing, good and loving and wise heavenly Father, who does everything for His children out of His love.
["Good" - as in "He's a good God" - loses all meaning when it looks and acts just like evil.]
... [But] God will punish those who do the evil to us. God will punish them. The Bible serves us notice that no matter what God's Will might be for the decisions and choices of others and how those choices impact our lives [Translation: "no matter what God preplanned, orchestrates, directs, causes others to do to you..."], that in the end, all human beings are accountable for their moral choices and what they do to other people... In other words, there are times when God will seem to will things in one direction...but then it 'appears' God wills something in the exact opposite direction simultaneously. Here we come to something that theologians throughout history call 'the two wills of God' [unbiblical!]...meaning that when God wills something on one level, He will appear to will its opposite on another level at the same exact time. [And yet Calvinists trust a dishonest, double-minded, self-opposing god like this!?!]... Do you find it strangely comforting that God's ways are mysterious?"
31. And let's see what Calvinist John Piper's "brilliant" advice is about how we should respond to the evil things that God "ordains" (from this article): "How can we hate what is evil if God has ordained it to happen? You hate what God wills to happen if he wills that you hate what he wills to happen. God might will something precisely so that you would hate it... We must be careful not to oversimplify things to where we can't hate something and be thankful for it at the same time. You can hate something and consider it evil and yet still see it as an expression of God's will."
33. Ligonier Ministries ("Vessels of destruction"): "As Christians in the Reformed tradition, we affirm the biblical view of providence that affirms the world is governed by God’s sovereign ordination... The length of our lives, the color of our hair, your reading of this magazine, and everything else that ever happens was decreed by God."
34. R.C. Sproul in "Discerning God's will: The three wills of God: "[In Calvinism/reformed theology] Whatever God 'permits' He sovereignly and efficaciously wills to permit... He will only permit me to do my worst if my worst coincides with His perfect providential plan."
35. Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology, pg. 331): "... we confess that we do not understand how it is that God can ordain that we carry out evil deeds and yet hold us accountable for them and not be blamed himself.... Scripture does not tell us...how it can be that God holds us accountable for what he ordains to come to pass." [They can't understand it because their theology is garbage. And I would say to Grudem, to Calvinists: "Well, then, maybe you had better figure out why you think this. When you're standing before God giving an account for what you believed about Him and taught others about Him, you'd better have a rock-solid answer, totally clear biblical reasons, for something as huge as this - because God's very character, reputation, and Truth is on the line - and 'well, we don't understand why it's true or how it's true, but it is" isn't going to be a good excuse for it, if and when you're wrong."]
37. John Piper ("Has God Predetermined Every Tiny Detail in the Universe, Including Sin?"): “Has God predetermined every tiny detail in the universe, such as dust particles in the air and all of our besetting sins? Yes… Yes, every horrible thing and every sinful thing is ultimately governed by God… He controls everything, and he does it for his glory and our good.”
No wonder there are so many atheists out there! What do you expect when people are taught that this is what God's really like!?!
38. Jonathan Edwards ("Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, Chapter III"): "It cannot be any injustice in God to determine who is certainly to sin, and so certainly to be damned... God has decreed every action of men, yea, every action that is sinful, and every circumstance of those actions... It can be made evident by reason, that nothing can come to pass, but what it is the will and pleasure of God should come to pass... It is a contradiction to say, he wills it, and yet does not choose it..." [If you read this work of Edwards, you'll see it's a bunch of philosophical ramblings, one bad idea leading to another. And yet Calvinists claim that Calvinism is all right from the Bible and that they don't use philosophy or "human logic" to determine truth. (Hahaha, good joke!)]
39. From my ex-pastor's March 2014 sermon about finding hope in hard times: “God is on the throne! Random evil doesn’t just happen to people... God is in control of each aspect of every detail... We’ve had people betray, lie, steal, vilify, slander, and do unspeakable things to us. Some of us have undergone horrific abuse at the hands of parents or aunts or uncles or brothers. God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us... That means, friends, that there is no such thing as random evil or random acts of tragedy.... John Flavel in The Mystery of God’s Providence says '… In all the sad and afflictive providences that befall you, eye God as the author. Set before you the sovereignty of God…' Amen!?!” [No! Not Amen! Not with the way Calvinists define sovereignty.]
40. John MacArthur again, in "Why does God allow so much suffering?": "He's absolutely in charge of everything. Everything. He controls everything... He is governing history in every minute detail. There's not one molecule in the universe that's out of line with His purposes.... So, while liberal theology and assorted other so-called evangelicals [hear the insult, discrediting those who don't see it his way] feel desperately the need to rescue God from [being the cause of evil and suffering], God is quite content to make it clear that He is, in fact, unhesitatingly sovereign over everything that exists, without a hint of reluctance. He's not asking to be rescued from bad press that's fallen upon Him because He's been blamed for all the bad things that are in the world... He's content to leave the responsibility for evil's existence and even its action, with Himself... God wills evil to exist.... Again, and again, God takes full responsibility for the existence of evil unfolding in this world.... The reason God ordained evil is for His glory. We praise Him because of what He has done to overcome evil." [Uhh, so we praise Him for "overcoming" the evil that He Himself planned and caused (isn't that a little schizophrenic, duplicitous, and self-defeating?), the evil He preplanned us to do, but then commanded us not to do, but then causes us to do, and then punishes us for!?!]
... You either believe in the God who is in complete control of evil, or you believe evil is in control of God, and He's reacting to it the best He can. [First of all, he means that God controls evil, not just is "in control" of evil, which is very different. And second of all, it's a false dichotomy to say that God must control evil or else evil would control Him, as if those are the only two possible options.]
41. From my ex-pastor's December 8, 2024 sermon about evil leaders: "[The early church believers] knew [God] was in control... even when they saw evil leaders doing evil things... They knew He was in control of even over the choices of evil leaders. He was guiding them to do His Will.... you might wonder 'How can these people be guilty when it says right here that all the evil things they did, it was God's plan.' [Martin] Luther says 'God is good and cannot do evil, but He uses evil men who cannot escape the impulse and movement of His power. [And yet Calvinists cry "But we don't say people are robots controlled by God!" Hogwash!] And yet when they do the very evil they're planning after being moved by God, it's their fault, not His.'" [But biblically, God didn't plan to make them be evil or do evil. He just foreknew they would be evil people who wanted to do evil things, and so He planned to put it to good use, incorporating their self-chosen evil into His plans.]
[In the service I didn't quote from - I think I quoted from the first service, so this would be the second service - he added that Luther is "the great German reformer. Luther is always such a very perceptive biblical commentator. He and other reformers were glued to the text, and they taught the Scriptures, and they preached the Scriptures." My ex-pastor quotes from this theological hero of his - the "great" Martin Luther - all the time, as all Calvinist pastors do, to promote their Calvinist views and agenda. Yet it's funny that in all those quotes, I've never heard him quote from Luther's highly antisemitic book The Jews and Their Lies. Hmm? Interesting. And ironically enough, do you know who else quoted Luther, using Luther's teachings to promote his views and agenda too? Hitler. Watch this video from Andy Woods to learn more: Neo-Calvinism vs. The Bible #4.]
42. And finally, from my ex-pastor's June 2022 sermon about Joseph and forgiveness: "Today we are going to be talking about one of the hardest things a human being can be called on to do, and that is to forgive someone who's abused them. Some of you have been horrifically abused and treated horribly by somebody. All of us have been betrayed at some point in our life, intentionally targeted, treated unjustly, someone has been cruel to us. And the question is 'How do you forgive them?'... And here's the key: My choice at that point - how I choose to respond to someone who has abused me - shows what I really think about God... All of our bitterness is ultimately traceable to resentment of God. Why? Because it was God who brought these circumstances into our lives in the first place, painful as they may be... And if I'm going to say 'I will not forgive this person. I'm going to hold it over their head,' then what I'm saying is 'No matter what You decided, Lord, no matter how You arranged this, You're the one that's guilty. And I am bitter and resentful towards God.'... God is fully sovereign and in control, and He is good," [Calvinists have a very weird definition of "good"!]
