Thank you, reddit/reformed. I'm honored!
[I'm sneaking this post in between the regular bi-weekly (every other week) posts. (Did you know that bi-weekly can mean both "every other week" and "twice a week"? What the heck, those are like total opposites!)]
Commenter Senior-Emergency-944 started a thread on Reddit/Reformed called Part of me wants to affirm it. But how do you refute this?! which linked to my post "But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!", asking for advice on how to refute the Calvinist quotes I shared about God causing evil.
If I was able to reply to Senior (I don't have a reddit account), I would've said this...
That's awesome! Thank you. I'm honored that you brought up this post for discussion among reformed Christians. And I think it's great that you're willing to examine this issue and think deeper about it, to face the dark, uncomfortable truth of what Calvinists really believe and teach. (And thank you to all those who checked out my blog because of it. I don't expect you to agree with what I say, but I hope you at least find things worth considering.)
But can I make a suggestion, Senior? I think your question should be changed from "How do you refute this?" to "Should we refute it?"
Should Calvinists focus on refuting/fighting against/explaining away what Calvinism really teaches and all its terrible but undeniable conclusions, or should they admit it and embrace it? And if they can't do that - if they still have a problem with it and can't bring themselves to admit it or embrace it - then maybe they should question/doubt/rethink their Calvinist beliefs instead of trying to rationalize them or trying to find ways to be okay with them.
You'll never get to the truth of it all or be able to escape bad theology if you start with the wrong focus and ask the wrong questions in an effort to try to support bad theology (when you should be rejecting/correcting it) and to try to become comfortable with its dark and wrong parts (when you shouldn't be comfortable with it at all).*
Just a suggestion from one believer to another, in the hopes that you can eventually escape Calvinism's vice-grip. Thank you again. God bless!
[*I've seen this before, such as in another reddit reformed thread called "If God doesn't love everyone/didn't die for the sins of everyone, how do we share the gospel?" where the commenter said "I’m struggling to understand how to even share the gospel if I believe in limited atonement and that God doesn’t truly love everyone." They're starting from the wrong starting point, asking the wrong question, struggling with the wrong thing - and so of course they're going to have some complicated, ongoing struggles. But instead of wondering how to share the gospel in light of a "limited atonement," they should be wondering "Is a limited atonement even biblical? Or is it wrong to think that God doesn't love everyone and didn't die for all sins of all people? Is Calvinism even true?" That should be their starting point. And it will lead to much different results than what they're focused on now.
As C.S. Lewis says in The Problem of Pain, chapter 7: "if the first step in an argument is wrong, everything that follows will be wrong."
It's sad to skim through reddit reformed and see all the Christians looking for help on how to accept things they don't want to believe, things that seem to destroy God's character and contradict His Word and that are so confusing they can't make sense of it. They've put their faith in Calvinism and they trust that what Calvinists tell them is true. And so from the beginning, they operate under the assumption that Calvinism is totally biblical and that they must accept it, which then leads them to look for advice on how to be brainwashed into more fully, on how to accept it and be okay with it even though alarm bells and red flags are popping up left and right in their hearts and spirits.
It's sad to see humble, trusting, well-meaning Christians struggling to climb a ladder that's on completely the wrong wall, while all along they're asking others on that ladder to convince them it's the right wall. Sad.]
If I had the time and a reddit account, I'd have liked to reply to many of the comments about my blog post. [Those of you who have reddit accounts should comment on that reddit post and upvote it so that it doesn't get buried and forgotten, so that more Calvinists will be exposed to these disturbing Calvinist quotes.]
But, for my own amusement, I'll simply share here what I would've said to these several commenters:
1. Cybersaint2K dismissed my whole post by stating "Here's some inside baseball you will only get from r/Reformed. He [they don't realize I'm a woman - that's funny] starts that off with a quote from Almighty over All [“God wills all things that come to pass"] that RC Sproul Jr. recanted, at one time in the 20-teens...he intended on re-writing this portion of chapter 3. He knew he was wrong, was corrected, and intended to fix it upon reprinting. This poor anti-Calvinist ["poor" anti-Calvinist, hahaha!] had no way of knowing this; he didn't know Jr and he isn't well-read enough in philosophy to know that we are not hard determinists, but soft determinists."
To Cybersaint, I'd say: "Okay, so that addresses one Calvinist quote I shared about God causing evil. But what about the other 41? And what about all the other Calvinists who say the same thing?"
And I'd add "Philosophy? Yep, that's exactly how Calvinism formulates its views and reaches its conclusions. I mean, I have always known it, but I never expected a Calvinist to admit it."
[And my guess is that, most likely, Sproul Jr. didn't think he was wrong and needed to correct it - but he knew people didn't like the sound of it and they were pushing back against it, and so he needed to find a different way to spin it to make it sound more palatable, less alarming.]
2. AbuJimTommy tried to defend all the Calvinist quotes about God causing evil by appealing to the Westminster Confession's statement about how God "ordains whatsoever comes to pass" but is not "the author of sin."
To that, I'd say "♪♪♪Mamma Mia, here we go again♪♪♪ - with Calvinists appealing to and relying on the Westminster Confession to prove/defend their convoluted and contradictory views, as if a document written by a bunch of reformed men in 1646 (or any other Reformed/Calvinist writing they refer to) is the infallible source of all answers and on the same level as the Bible."
[ZoDeFoo gave this reply about the Westminster's "ordain but not the author" view: "I've always found that article particularly unhelpful. 'It was all His idea, but not His fault.'"
Yep!
And DaOgDuneamouse added: "This is nonsense. If I stand on a 30 story building and throw rocks over the edge, gravity is a secondary cause and the accelerant of the rock. But I was still the initializer of the events. So, when my rock hits someone and liquifies their brains, I am still a murder[er].
This is just determinism wearing it's Sunday best. Determinism, as it has always been, is a demonic way of shifting blame of man's sin to another. Dress it up in fancy language all you want it's still just, 'it ain't my fault.'
This is particularly heinous, and heretical, as it puts the blame on God."
Well said.]
3. Mlax12345 said "Alright. I’d like some explanation. I’ve been struggling with double predestination lately. How does it not lead to something like what the meme says?"
My answer: "That's exactly where it leads! And it sounds like you're struggling because you can see the truth of what Calvinism really teaches, and it bothers you because you know deep-down it's wrong. Don't let any Calvinist use their slippery double-talk, circular reasoning, redefinitions of words/concepts, and cherry-picked/reinterpreted verses to confuse or manipulate you into ignoring the red flags and alarm bells, into thinking Calvinism makes sense when it doesn't, into thinking it fits the plain reading of Scripture when it doesn't, or into thinking that good, humble, God-honoring, Bible-affirming Christians can't disagree with them but must simply accept what they say despite our doubts and concerns. You're accurately seeing its disturbing undeniable conclusions and end points, and you're on the right track to question it. Keep going."
4. Tony10000 says "We must realize that God looks at everything from the eternal rather than the temporal perspective and remember: 'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory...' 2 Corinthians 4:17"
My reply: What does time have to do with anything? Does the evilness of an act, or who's responsible for it, or the okay-ness of causing evil, depend on the time period we're in? Does it change based on whether we're on earth or in eternity?
Although your statements in and of themselves aren't wrong, it's not an answer to the question at hand because it doesn't address or refute the Calvinist comments about God causing evil. It doesn't explain how Calvinists can claim they're not teaching that God causes evil when that's exactly what they're teaching, or how they try to make it all acceptable and biblical when it's not. A few billion years isn't going to change it.
All your answer does is kick the can down the road: "Well, we can't understand now why it's okay for God to cause evil, but we will in eternity when we see God's good end-goals," as if good end-goals justify any means to get there, all means, evil means (not just "allowing and using" evil means, but decreeing, preplanning, causing, orchestrating, controlling evil means, which is what Calvinism teaches and is much different).
And furthermore, "affliction" is too broad and undefined, and it's not necessarily an equivalent of "evil," so it shouldn't be used to defend Calvinism's theological errors and the damage it does regarding the topic at hand.
There's a big difference between "natural" afflictions, "morally evil" afflictions, afflictions caused by man's free-will decisions, afflictions allowed by God, afflictions caused by God, etc. There are many different types of and causes of afflictions.
And just because God allows/uses "afflictions" in our lives (regardless of the type and cause) and just because He brings glory/good out of it doesn't necessarily mean that He always preplanned, decreed, orchestrated, wanted, willed, caused the affliction (as Calvinism would say). He can use bad things and work them into something good even if He didn't preplan, decree, orchestrate, want, will, cause them - things He simply allowed to happen either through the natural processes He set up or through the free-will decisions of people and angels.
And it would be one thing for God cause a natural affliction (a natural "evil") like a plague or a storm, but it's an entirely different thing if He caused moral afflictions/evils like sin, rape, abuse, murder, etc. (not just "allowed it" but "preplanned/caused it"). Because God doesn't have commands against natural evils, but He does have commands against moral evils. And so He can cause natural afflictions/evils and yet still be holy, but He cannot cause moral afflictions/evils and yet still be holy. He cannot command us to not do morally evil things... but then cause us to irresistibly do morally evil things... and then punish us for doing the morally evil things He predestined/caused us to do... and yet still be a holy, just, trustworthy God (despite a Calvinist's insistence that He can).
5. Semper-gourmanda said "... That blog [my blog] makes too much out of predetermine... They make too much of the word predetermine, as if God is the cause of their sinning."
My reply: Hahaha, that's funny! It's Calvinism that makes too much of predetermine, as if God is the cause of sin and evil - which is exactly what all those Calvinist quotes prove. And yet Semper thinks that I'm the one doing it, when I'm really just calling Calvinism out for it.
A few examples from my post (bold added) - these are just so good that I can't help but share them over and over and over again😒:
John MacArthur ("Doctrine of Election, part 1"): "You’re guilty. You’re culpable. You did it. You did it with your own will. But God had predetermined it would be done. It was set in his predetermined plan..."
Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “[God] decides and causes all things to happen... He has foreordained everything… even sin...”
John Calvin (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God): “... Scripture shows Him not only willing [the evils that happen], but the author of them... Of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will..."
Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason, and Revelation): “Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything…”
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.”
Jeff Durbin, talking to a woman about evils like gang rape (The Madness of Calvinism): “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."
Vincent Cheung (The Problem of Evil): "Nothing exists or happens without God, not merely permitting, but actively willing it to exist or happen… [God] controls all human affairs and decisions... Since this is true, it follows that God has decreed the existence of evil, he has not merely permitted it..."
My ex-pastor on September 12, 2021, basically the 20th anniversary of 9-11: "God had everything to do with 9-11. If He didn't, then He's not God... He is the one orchestrating world events.... He was directing the whole thing.... God had everything to do with 9-11. He has everything to do with any other tragedy.... God uses wicked agents, people, to do His deliberate plan."
John MacArthur (Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God): "Well of course; [God] controls everything... 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."
Martin Luther (The Bondage of the Will, see this section): "... [God] thus works the evils by evil men... He uses evil instruments, which cannot escape the sway and motion of His Omnipotence... the evils are done as God Himself moves... All this is fixed certainty, if we believe that God is Omnipotent!... the wicked man cannot evade the motion and action of God... [but] he must continue of necessity to sin and err..." [Notice the error, the assumption, that "omnipotence" is about how God must use His power all the time to control/cause everything, even sin... or else He's not omnipotent.]
Mark Talbot/John Piper (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, pg 42-44): "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'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..." [A detrimental misunderstanding of what "providence" means!]
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." [In Calvinism, this doesn't mean that we actually make our sinful decisions freely on our own or that we choose what we want to do or that we can choose to do something else. But it means that Calvi-god built into our natures the sinful desires he wanted us to have which causes us to will to do/desire to do the sinful things he predetermined us to do. And since we cannot pick, change, or resist those built-in, Calvi-god-determined desires, we must obey and follow them, irresistibly committing the sins he predetermined us to commit. But because we "wanted" to do them - even though that's all we could want to do and choose to do, by his design - he will hold us responsible for doing it. Nonsense and hogwash! This is just putting unnecessary extra links in the chain between Calvi-god and the origination/cause of sin, hoping that we don't see the connection.]
So, Semper, am I the one saying that God predetermines/causes sin, or is it the Calvinists? Am I misrepresenting Calvinism when I claim that it teaches that God predetermines/causes all sin and evil?
Do Calvinists really think they can say that God "creates, plans, wills, decrees, ordains, instigates, brings about, authors, orchestrates, directs, controls, causes" all sin and evil... but that He doesn't really author/cause it... and so He isn't really responsible for it!?! That we are really responsible for it, and so He can and should punish us for it!?!
And do they really think that they're often-used "It's a mystery we can't understand anyway because God is so far above us, and so we just have to accept it and live with the 'tension.' Who are you, O man, to talk back to God anyway? He's sovereign and can do whatever He wants for His pleasure and glory" fixes, answers, or explains it?
Or as my ex-pastor said in his 9-11 sermon: "but the Bible shows no tension whatsoever around predestination and human accountability... How's that fit together? I don't have a clue. But there you have it. God has a sovereign, divine plan that even includes how people respond and yet those people are still fully accountable."
"I don't have a clue."
"I don't have a clue???"
Well, then, pastor, maybe you should get a clue. Maybe you should figure out why you believe something like that... because what Calvinism teaches about God causing sin, evil, and unbelief (but punishing people for it) is pretty much the worst things you can say about God. And I doubt that "I don't have a clue" is going to be an acceptable excuse for those beliefs when you stand before God trying to explain why you believed that stuff and taught it to others.
When it comes to "cause," most Calvinists brush it off or stick their heads in the sand, expecting us to accept their lame "But we don't say that God causes sin." They debate over the terminology - the word "cause" - because they know how bad it sounds and the terrible conclusions it leads to and the damage it does to God's character, Word, and Truth. And so they look for any other word than "cause," even though "cause" is exactly what they mean.
"Oh," they claim, "of course God plans, wills, decrees, ordains, instigates, orchestrates, directs, controls all sin and evil - and of course people have no ability or choice to do anything different than the sin and evil God predetermined they'd do - but God didn't cause their sins, and so He's not responsible for it. People are responsible for their sins because they followed their desires [the irresistible desires Calvi-god preprogrammed in them] and committed the sins themselves [the sins Calvi-god predetermined they'd do and orchestrated], and so they deserve the punishment they get."
Calvinism in one sentence: "God doesn't cause sin and evil, even though He really does!"
We all know what they're really teaching. And so do they - which is why they have to try so hard to deny, fight, rationalize, obscure, or hide it, which just leads to them creating all kinds of conundrums, contradictions, and new theological problems along the way. And then when they get painted into a corner, out comes the "Who are you, O man" line - a total misapplication and misinterpretation of Romans 9.
6. Cufflock tries to differentiate between God actively causing/forcing sin and simply not stopping sin: "God indeed ordained all sins to happen just as every action of every creation had been ordained. This author [me] is confused... [because] ordaining sin to be committed by the vehicle of not stopping it is different from ordaining sins to be committed by the vehicle of applying any force to the creation in order for them to do evil.
God is not obligated to stop any sin...all sins are committed because God chose not to stop His creation to commit them...because God chose to let man be themselves, mankind are nothing but creature that only desire evil so as long as God chose to loosen the leash on our neck then the first thing we are going to do is to be ourselves and commit sin.
This author apparently denied his own state of being only evil as what God said in Genesis 6:5 and that led him to this confusion in order to deny God’s word to make him feel better about himself."
My reply: Firstly, the only reason Calvinists claim that Calvi-god doesn't "force" people to sin is because of the extra chain links they put between him and sin.
Calvi-god made sure the reprobates were born with the unregenerated, God-hating, sin-loving nature/will which comes with built-in sinful desires they can't resist, causing them to "want" to do the sins he predestined - and since those are the only desires he created them with, it's the only things they can "choose" to do.
See! So Calvi-god doesn't have to "force" them to sin - he doesn't have to physically force a man to pick up a gun and pull the trigger and kill another person - because the man's will/desires cause him to "want" to do it all on his own. Calvi-god just "allowed" the man to obey the desires that Calvi-god built into his will/nature.
This is nothing more than Person A giving Person B a magic potion that causes B to want to kill Person C - a desire that B cannot resist or change but must obey. And then when B kills C, A claims "But it wasn't my fault. I didn't force B to kill C. B did it freely on his own because he 'wanted' to do it."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nonsense and hogwash!
Secondly, I agree that God chooses to let man sin, that He chooses to not stop man from sinning... but merely 'not stopping sin' is absolutely not what happens in Calvinism, as seen in the quotes from my "But Calvinists don't say..." post, such as...
"[God] foreordains all things that come to pass"... "God had predetermined it would be done"... "He decides all that is to happen"... "[He is] the author of [evils]"... "God knows the future because He decrees the future"... "all the evils He plans"... "take God to be the creator...and sometimes even the instigator of evil"... "God disapproves of some of what he ordains to happen. That is, he forbids some of the things he brings about."... “Has God predetermined every tiny detail in the universe, such as dust particles in the air and all of our besetting sins? Yes"... "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"... "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."
I could go on, but you get the picture.
As I said, in Calvinism, God first preplanned everything that would happen and then He orchestrates everything to work out as He planned, even sin and evil. He makes sure people have the desires He preplanned them to have, which causes them to want to commit the sins He planned them to commit. They had no choice about these desires and cannot resist or change the desires, but they must obey them, ultimately committing the sins God predetermined.
This is nothing like merely "not stopping sins" that people freely choose to do on their own. [A Calvinist named Roland - whom I really like and respect as a person - made the same mistake as Cufflock. See our conversation about it here: "Non-Calvinism is DISGUSTING and IMMORAL."]
Thirdly, you should keep Genesis 6:5 in context. It's specifically about the time when the earth was so evil (because fallen angels mated with human women and created half-demonic offspring) that God decided He must flood the world, destroy all life, and start over again with Noah and his family - a necessary step to protect the purity of Noah's bloodline. You can't just take any old verse from a particular point in history and apply it to all people of all time from all generations.
Because if we could, then we non-Calvinists could just as easily use Genesis 4:26 - 'At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord' - to prove that all men everywhere and all the time seek God and call on Him, with no indication that God initiated/caused it.
Or we could apply Romans 2:14 to everyone - "... when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law... they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." - proving that all of us have enough good, enough godly knowledge, built into our natures and consciences to inspire us to follow God's laws, even without ever hearing His laws and without Him causing us to do it.
And in fact, this actually should be applied to everyone, because that's the way God created us all. And it contradicts Calvinists' claims that "totally-depraved" people have no spiritually good thing in them, nothing to cause them to do good or turn to God. Having God's laws written on our hearts and consciences is a very good spiritual thing, something that could draw/turn us to God.
And fourthly, how does me opposing Calvinism's teaching that God causes evil equate to me denying being "only evil"? I don't get it.
Maybe what you're saying is that because I don't think that "people are unable to make decisions on our own and so God must make our decisions for us," then it must mean I deny the depravity of mankind.
But I'm not denying depravity; I'm denying that "total depravity" means "total inability" (a Calvinist conflation). I believe in depravity, but I believe it means that humans are sinful, and that our sins separate us from God, and that we cannot work for or earn salvation on our own or pay for our sins ourselves (but contrary to Calvinism, "belief" is not a working-for-salvation thing), and so we needed a Savior to pay the price for us.
But Calvinists stretch the definition of depravity too far, stretching it to mean that people are unable to seek God or believe in God unless He makes them do it.
Calvinism's bad definitions/understandings of things (total depravity, sovereign, spiritual death/regeneration/born again, predestination/election, etc.) are what leads to their very confused, contradictory, convoluted, unbiblical theology.
And so actually, I'm not just denying "Calvinist total depravity," but I'm denying the whole Calvinist TULIP.
7. Top_Measurement_25 said "We call things evil that aren't evil, and we call things good with no concept of good apart from God. Who are we to reply to God that this thing we don't like is evil, or to ascribe sinfulness...?"
Sure, there are definitely things we misdefine and view differently from God, and things that God hasn't revealed clearly to us in His Word. But this doesn't address Calvinism's big problem: That Calvi-god commands one thing but causes the opposite. He commands "don't sin," but he causes sin. He commands "seek me, repent and believe," but he causes many people to ignore him or reject him.
God has given clear commands about things we shouldn't do (clearly-defined sin and evil), while at the same time He (in Calvinism) has preplanned that we do them and then He causes us to irresistibly do them and then He punishes us for doing what He predetermined us to do.
That's a horse of a different color! It's far different than us calling something "evil" that isn't really morally evil, such as maybe an illness or someone else's opinions or a behavior we just don't like.
Just because God is God does not mean He can cause any old evil He wants and still be a "good" God - because to cause evil (not just "use" our free-will evil, but to actually preplan, ordain, orchestrate, cause, control our evil) is the antithesis of "good," regardless of how Calvinists try to spin it.
And Calvinism's detrimental theological views about God ordaining/causing evil but holding us accountable for it cannot be explained away with "Well, we just see things differently than God does."
(trick question)
To address this further and more fully, I'll share something I already wrote in other posts:
When non-Calvinists ask Calvinists how they could think it's okay for God to "ordain" (preplan/orchestrate/direct/cause) all sin, evil, and unbelief but to then punish us for it - when we ask how God can do those things and yet still be considered "good" and "just" - Calvinists say things like "Well, what's sin, evil, and injustice to us is not necessarily sin, evil, and injustice to God, because He sees and judges things differently than we do."
One Calvinist said (paraphrased, see this post) "Sin is when we break God's laws. But since He didn't give Himself these laws - since He didn't tell Himself that He can't do those things - then it's not sin for Him to do them... God gets to decide what's just and what's not. So even if something seems unjust to us, it doesn't mean it is unjust. Because it might be just in God's judgment."
John Calvin teaches this too (from Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God): "But the objection is not yet resolved, that if all things are done by the will of God, and men contrive nothing except by His will and ordination, then God is the author of all evils... [however] 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... Hence, since the criminal misdeeds by men proceed from God with a cause that is just, though perhaps unknown to us, though the first cause of all things is His will, I nevertheless deny that He is the author of sin*. [Deny it all you want, Johnny, but it's what your theology undeniable teaches, no matter how you try to deny, spin, or soften it.] ... 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."
Calvin's saying that what's sin for man and Satan is not sin for God because He doesn't have our sin nature. So Calvi-god can do any kind of and amount of evil he wants - the same kinds and amounts we do, that Satan does - but it can never be considered evil for him (only for us and Satan) because he doesn't have our sin nature. Calvi-god's actions - even ones that would be considered evil if done by us or Satan - flow from his (supposedly) good character and pure motives, not bad ones like we and Satan have. Therefore, whatever Calvi-god does is good, even if it's the same evil things we and Satan do.😕
[*When Calvin says here that he denies that God is the author of sin, he totally contradicts what he said elsewhere in that book: “... 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..."😕
And he makes a similarly huge and obvious contradiction when he says in Institutes chapter 17 "I deny that [wicked men] serve the will of God. For we cannot say that he who is carried away by a wicked mind performs service on the order of God" ... but then he goes on in chapter 18 to say "The sum of the whole is this, - since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence; so that he not only exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, but also forces the reprobate to do him service."
"God doesn't author sin; God does author sin... The wicked don't serve God's Will; they do serve God's Will... They don't perform God's service; they do perform God's service"!?! Hahaha, make up your mind, Calvin! Confused, inconsistent theologian, table of one! (See a few more notes on Calvin's contradictions here.)]
Jonathan Edwards would agree ("Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, Chapter III"): "That we should say, that God has decreed every action of men, yea, every action that is sinful, and every circumstance of those actions; that [he] predetermines that they shall be in every respect as they afterwards are; that he determines that there shall be such actions, and just so sinful as they are; and yet that God does not decree the actions that are sinful, as sin, but decrees them as good, is really consistent. [What the ...!?!] For we do not mean by decreeing an action as sinful, the same as decreeing an action so that it shall be sinful; but by decreeing an action [as] sinful, I mean decreeing it for the sake of the sinfulness of the action. [Huh!?!] God decrees that they shall be sinful, for the sake of the good that he causes to arise from the sinfulness thereof; whereas man decrees them for the sake of the evil that is in them." [And now in English: "God decreed all sin, but He does it for good reasons, and so it's not sin for Him. But since we do it for bad reasons, it is sin for us."]
And so would John MacArthur (Doctrine of Election, part 1): "... The pervasive notion of these skeptics and critics of this doctrine is that somehow election is unfair. Somehow it is unjust. But first of all, 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... It is an essential understanding of God that he is holy, that his nature is holy, that he is infinitely and perfectly just, that he is morally flawless and perfect, that he is perfection. Everything in him and of him and for him and from him and by him is perfect. And so whatever he says is just is what justice is. [But the problem isn't what God says is just, but it's what Calvinists say is just. And that's very different!]... And whatever it is that he wills is by definition just because he is just. [Which is how Calvinists can excuse any evil thing Calvi-god does.] 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." [And so, therefore, it's just for Calvi-god to will anything he wants to, even murder and abuse and unbelief. It's not that he does what's just, but it's that whatever he does is just, just because he does it.]
Calvinism erases the line between good and evil, between justice and injustice. It tries to convince us that they can be one and the same, that there might not really be a difference between the two even if we stupid humans think there is. And then it accuses us of fighting against or dishonoring God or disbelieving His Word if we have a problem with it, shaming us into getting in line, using our humility against us. (Can you not see how satanic this is!?!)
But if evil and good, justice and injustice, are essentially the same to God - if we can't really know the difference because there might not really be one in God's eyes - then how in the world can we obey all the verses that tell us to do good and seek/apply justice!?!
Isaiah 1:16-17: "... Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice ..."
Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly ..."
Psalm 106:3: "Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right."
Jer. 22:3: "This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right..."
Prov. 31:9: "Speak up and judge fairly..."
Psalm 37:27: "Turn from evil and do good..."
Amos 5:15: "Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts..."
Zec. 7:9: "This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Administer true justice...'"
And these are just a few. These verses mean nothing if we are to believe that we can't know what real good or real justice is, that there's ultimately no real dividing line between evil and good, between injustice and justice, at least as far as we can tell.
Lev. 19:15: "Do not pervert justice..."
But this is exactly what Calvinism does!
Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
But this is exactly what Calvinism does! (And what nonsense that verse is if, as Calvinists say, we can't even really know the difference between good and evil because there might not really be one.)
[But do you know what's really funny about all this?
Proverbs 28:5 tells us "Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully."
Proverbs 2:6,9 says "For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding... Then you will understand what is right and just and fair - every good path."
And Hebrews 5:14 tells us "But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
And so if Calvinists say we can't really tell the difference between good and evil, between justice and injustice, because there may not ultimately be one, then what does this tell us about Calvinists!?!]
C.S. Lewis (a favorite of mine) addresses this issue in The Problem of Pain 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 Calvinists claim) it's all a matter of perception, if good can be evil and evil can be good, and if 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.
[And then if all the sin and evil we do is really "good" in God's eyes, what is forgiveness? Why would we need to be forgiven, and for what? And what is grace? What is it really covering? Is it really needed if sin and evil is actually just an illusion? Why did Jesus die, and what for? When you destroy/mangle the truth of sin and evil, you destroy/mangle Jesus's sacrificial death, forgiveness, and God's grace. Not to mention His love and trustworthiness and a whole bunch of other things.]
"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. [Hmm, kinda a little like "bi-weekly," huh?]
Calvinism erases the line between good and evil, which essentially erases the line between God and Satan, which then results in lowering God to Satan's level and, consequently, elevating Satan to God's level.
And who do you think benefits from this? Who wants this to happen?
I'll give you a hint...
[I find it amusing that despite the fact that Lewis is most definitely not a Calvinist and that he often emphatically and clearly opposes Calvinism, Calvinists keep loving him and quoting him. Odd!]
8. And finally, bluejayguy26 said this about me: "Guy has a blog 'anticalvinistrant.com' and quotes his 'ex-pastor' numerous times to make his points. There’s some issues goin on"...
To which I'd reply: "Hahaha, what an understatement, because you don't even know the half of it. Boy, oh, boy, could I tell you stories! And it's not even just issues with Calvinism or my ex-pastor, so ha!
But speaking of issues with my ex-pastor, since bluejayguy26 brought it up😉...
Now this is a minor issue [more minor than, say, his stealth Calvinist take-over of our church; and all the manipulation and shaming and gaslighting he uses to get people to side with him and to keep people from disagreeing with him; and the fact that the church has deleted/blocked comments that disagree with him; and that he openly admitted in a sermon that he has no patience with people, which probably repelled many hurting, introverted people who would never dream of burdening anyone with their problems; and his many months of pressuring/guilting people into giving more and more money to the church "for outreach purposes," while more and more improvements and upgrades keep getting done to the building and grounds; and, most recently, when the church basically fired/kicked out long-term members and employees who disagree with the his theology], but as minor as this is and regardless of the fact that it has nothing to do with Calvinism, it still bugs me nonetheless because it shows what kind of heart and spirit he has and how (in my opinion) he's not a good shepherd of hearts (I think he should've been a professor or author instead of a pastor):
The teenage son of a friend - a gentle, super-sweet, kind-hearted kid who's one of my favorite kids outside of my own - was rather excited and pleased with himself for starting to read a well-known classic Christian book. And he told the pastor about it. And instead of complimenting or encouraging him about it, the pastor shut him down and said "Come back and talk to me when you've read this other book."
And then another time, this same sweet kid told the pastor about a hobby he enjoys (a perfectly-acceptable, enjoyable, could-lead-to-a-future-career hobby)... and the pastor essentially mocked and shamed him for it, treating him like he's too old for such things and rather immature for enjoying something like that.
Ugh! Poor kid! (The pastor's lucky I wasn't standing there overhearing this because I don't think I'd have been able to stop my mouth from saying what it wanted to say. I was simply fuming about it when my friend told me. Crushing a young teen's heart, enthusiasm, and joy like that!😖😠😡)
So, yeah, I've got issues - but only some of which are about Calvinism and my ex-pastor's tactics, personality, and leadership style.😉
And besides, aren't some things worth having "issues" over? There are some things in life that if you don't have issues over them, then something's wrong!
Anyway, back to what bluejay said about my blog name. In case he or she didn't see it, a note in my blog's left sidebar explains why I named my blog what I did:
The first several names I wanted were already taken, but then when I imagined the opposition reading my posts and going "Oh, that's just another one of those anti-Calvinist rants," I figured "Why not beat 'em to the punch!"😉"
Just for the record.
Okay, I'm done now. I just wanted to get this out of my system.
(I thought this post would be a lot shorter when I first started working on it, which is why I was just gonna slip it in between the "bigger" posts. Sorry it's not shorter. I tried. And so I think I'll simply resume my bi-weekly posting now, waiting two weeks - my definition of bi-weekly - until I publish the next big post.)
Hopefully now some of you will go to that reddit post and help bring it to the top of the list, so that more and more Calvinists have to face the fact that Calvinism really does teach the terrible things it does!
