Alana L. 5k ("sovereign" 4/conflations: foreknow vs foreplan)

This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist 

Point #5 still: 

K (part 4): "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."  

 

Foreknow vs Foreplan

"Oh," the Calvinist replies, "but God needed Assyria (or anybody, for that matter) to be/do evil for His plans, and so He foreplanned they would be/do evil.  They had no ability to do anything else or to choose to be good because God planned to use their evilness.  And so it had to be that way."  

My reply to them: "No, I think God foreplanned to use Assyria's self-chosen evilness to discipline Israel, but He did not foreplan them to be/do evil.  Assyria had a choice in who they were and what they did.  And God foreknew they would be/chose evil, and so He found a way to work their evil into His plans.  But if Assyria had chosen to be good instead of evil, God would've foreknown Assyria would be good and would've come up with a different plan."  

As Dr. Tony Evans says "[God] never accepts or condones sin, but he can still use sin to sovereignly accomplish his kingdom plan" (The Tony Evans Bible Commentary, Genesis 38:27-30).  

It's like the old "what came first: the chicken or the egg" thing: 

"What came first: the planning or the knowing?"  

In Calvinism, God planned everything first... and then He foreknows it will happen... and then He causes us to irresistibly "choose" to do it.  And so we are locked into doing what He preplanned from the very beginning, even sin and evil.  

John Piper on the sovereignty of God: "The reason God knows the future is because he plans the future and accomplishes it... 

John MacArthur ("Answering Big Questions About the Sovereignty of God"): “There is no difference between what God knows, what God allows and what God determines..."

John MacArthur ("Doctrine of Election, part 1"): "You’re guilty.  You’re culpable.  You did it.... But God had predetermined it would be done.  It was set in his predetermined plan and foreknowledge.  That is to predetermine, to foreknow, is not simply to have information about what’s going to happen, but to predetermine it."

Tom Hicks (Founders Ministries, "The Nature of God's Eternal Decree"): "... God’s decree [does not depend] on knowledge conditioned by the future free choices of human agents.  Rather, God’s knowledge of the future depends on God’s decree alone.  God knows the future because He decrees the future."

So all the evil and sin in the Bible and in our lives and in our world was first preplanned by Calvi-god, predestined to definitely happen (and we couldn't choose anything else)... which is how he knew it would happen.  

In Calvinism, foreknowing automatically and necessarily includes foreplanning (a violation of the pure definition of "foreknowledge"), locking in the future, locking in our sins.  Calvi-god "foreknows" and "allows" only what he first preplanned and causes.

From my ex-pastor, August 2022: "[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."

And yet even though Calvi-god predestined, wills, decrees, directs, causes all sin and evil, Calvinists will agree with us that God doesn't condone/approve of sin.  (Do you understand what this does to God's character!?!  Because Calvinists sure don't.)  

John Piper ("What is the will of God and how do we know it?"): "... God is sovereign over all things and yet disapproves of many things.  Which means that God disapproves of some of what he ordains to happen.[😕]  That is, he forbids some of the things he brings about.[😕]  And he commands some of the things he hinders.[😕]  Or to put it most paradoxically: God wills some events in one sense that he does not will in another sense.... That’s the first meaning of the will of God: It is God’s sovereign control of all things.  We will call this his 'sovereign will' or his 'will of decree.'  It cannot be broken.  It always comes to pass. ... For example, if you were badly abused as a child, and someone asks you, 'Do you think that was the will of God?' you now have a way to make some biblical sense out of this, and give an answer that doesn’t contradict the Bible.  You may say, 'No it was not God’s will; because he commands that humans not be abusive, but love each other. The abuse broke his commandment and therefore moved his heart with anger and grief.  But, in another sense, yes, it was God’s will (his sovereign will), because there are a hundred ways he could have stopped it.  But for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, he didn’t.'... But in fact we should not approve of sin or do it, even though it is part of God’s sovereign will.[😕]"

What he's saying is that God commands one thing (His revealed/spoken Will) while He preplanned/causes the opposite (His unspoken, "sovereign Will"), that we shouldn't sin even though we must sin.  Because they're both "His Will," on different levels.  

So both sinning and not sinning, obedience and disobedience, good and evil, are His Will - even in the same situation, even though they completely contradict each other, and even though it totally makes God duplicitous and untrustworthy (in Calvinism).  [This is really just a way of erasing the line between good and evil, of calling good "evil" and evil "good".  And we all know what Isaiah 5:20 says about that: "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."  And, of course, we know why some bad, heretical teachings sound good and godly, and we know who's behind it: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.  And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.  It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.  Their end will be what their actions deserve.” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)] 

As R.C. Sproul contradictorily taught (in What Does It Mean That God Is Sovereign?): "... as Christians who believe in a sovereign God, we have to affirm that, in some sense, God must ordain whatsoever comes to pass... all things are under the scope of God's sovereignty, including our wickedness... [God] is sovereign over...human affairs.  And He is sovereign in His inherent right to impose obligations on His creations, to say to them, 'Thou shalt not do this' and 'Thou shalt do that.'  Do we believe that He has that sovereignty, the right to command obedience from us and impose obligations on us?  Every time we sin, we challenge God's sovereign right to command what we should do."

Yes, but, in Calvinism, every time we sin, we are simply obeying what Calvi-god sovereignly ordained for us to do and caused us to do, even if he commanded us to do the opposite.  Disobeying his spoken commands is simply obeying his unspoken ones.  

[So which one is truly "his will," which one is the thing he really wants us to do: the thing he says he wants us to do or the thing he causes us to do contrary to what he said?  With a two-faced god like Calvi-god, can we ever really know for sure what his will is or what he wants us to do?  

He might say he doesn't want us to have an affair or kill our families, but if we do those things then it's because he ordained/orchestrated/caused it, because it was his secret, sovereign will, despite what he claimed he wanted us to do.  

As Theodore Zachariades preaches (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!" 

And 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…”

😕😵😖😨😱😢] 

And here's even more nonsensical hogwash from John Piper about how we should respond to the evil things that Calvi-god ordains/wills (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."  

Do you really think God is supposed to be this unclear and confusing, this duplicitous, deceptive, and self-contradictory, this untrustworthy!?!

[Sidenote: Along with most everything else, Calvinists misunderstand the idea of "God's Will."  They believe God's Will is about Him planning, decreeing, causing everything that happens, even if He doesn't like it or approve of it.  They think God's Will always happens, and so everything that happens is His Will.  

R.C. Sproul Jr. (Almighty Over All): “God wills all things that come to pass..."

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."

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… Although sin and unbelief are contrary to what God commands…” 

Calvinists think that everything happens because God wanted/planned it to happen, and so everything that happens is His sovereign Will (as Piper said), even abuse.  (Do you ever wonder why there are so many atheists?  This is partly why!  Calvinists teach this hogwash, this false god, and then call it "true Christianity, the true God of the Bible whom you must love and worship anyway.")

But Calvinists misunderstand "God's Will," which is not about God wanting/planning/causing everything that happens.

According to Strong's Concordance/HELPS Word-studies, "God's Will" (especially in verses talking 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.”  

His Will (when it comes to our own lives and decisions) is not about pre-set plans that must happen or about contradictory things He commanded and planned.  His Will is about what He desires for us and from us, what He wants us to do or not do.  He tells us clearly in the Bible what He wants us to do, what He expects from us - and we can trust that His Will is exactly whatever He tells us it is, whatever He commands us to do.  But we get to choose whether or not we do it, because God gave us free-will to decide.  It's just that simple.  God says what He means and means what He says, and we can trust Him.  (Unlike Calvi-god.)

And so if we do what He commands, we are following/obeying His Will.  But if we disobey or fail to do His commands, then we are not doing His Will.  And so sometimes His Will doesn't get done and sometimes things happen that aren't His Will.  And that's on us, not on Him.  (And sin will never be "His Will," even though He allows us to do it and even though He can work it into His plans and bring good out of it.)

But, of course, the problem is that Calvinists don't think people can choose to resist God's Will, and so they define everything we do as "God's Will," even sin and evil.  And then they have to come up with different types of "God's Will" (like all their other concepts), different contradicting levels of "God's Will" in order to make sense of Calvi-god saying one thing but causing the opposite.  And it creates a massive theological mess - a confusing, convoluted word-salad of ideas and contradictory definitions - trying to make unbiblical things sounds biblical, bad things sound good, wrong things sound right, and to make it all sound like it's glorifying to God and humble for us to accept it.

And because it's so confusing, and takes too much time to sort through, and sounds so lofty and high-minded and educated, we sheeple in the church just nod and go "Oh, okay, I guess so."]

Okay, now, back to "foreplan vs foreknow":

But contrary to Calvinism, I believe that we choose first, then He foreknows what we will choose, and then He makes His plans around that.  And so we can truly choose different paths to take.  Our decisions are not dependent on His foreknowledge, but His foreknowledge is dependent on what we will choose.  And because God foreknows what we will choose, He can preplan ways to incorporate whatever we choose, working it all towards the end He wants.  This isn't the same thing as preplanning what we choose to do, but it's preplanning how to use what we will choose to do.  And that's very different!  

It's kinda like - now don't go too far with any illustration - a "choose your own path" book, where we choose which path we take (the decisions we make), but the author still finds a way to weave it all together to get to the end they planned.  Our free-will decisions don't necessarily, or ultimately, change God's overall end-goals for mankind, but they do change/affect our end, our journey getting there, the part we play in His plans (whether He uses our obedience or our disobedience), the consequences we face/create, whether we earn blessings or punishment, and the rewards we get in eternity.

Think of the biblical story of the tower of Babel.  After the flood, God told mankind to spread out and fill the earth, but they chose to band together and make a tower to reach heaven.  If they had just done what God said, God's plan would've been accomplished through their obedience.  But they chose to disobey, and so God went with a different tactic based on their disobedience: He confused their speech and created multiple languages, causing them to separate into same-language groups and to spread out and fill the earth, just as He commanded.  

God has ways of accomplishing His plans, whether we cooperate or not.  And so our disobedience and bad decisions - free-will decisions we didn't have to make and weren't locked into - don't really stop God's plans or His ability to work things out, but they do alter the path it takes to get there and they do hurt our own lives, futures, eternities, and other people. 

Nobody is locked into being evil.  We choose what we're going to do among real options that are available to us, and God foreknows what we'll choose (at least that's what I believe, but Christians have different views about that), and so He foreknows how to incorporate it into His plans, to reach His goals.  And so if God knows we'll choose evil, He makes His plans around our evil, to incorporate it.  But if He knows we'll choose good instead of evil, then He makes His plans around our good decisions instead.  At least that's how I see it.  

[And when I say things like "He foreknows what we first choose," I mean according to our perception of time, not necessarily His - because I cannot even begin to imagine how He experiences time or sees things all at once or how He is inside or outside of time, or anything like that.  So I'll simply say "foreknows" as we understand it: He knows what we will freely choose to do - without Him predetermining/causing it - before it even happens.  He "foreknows" it because He's already seen it happening on His big, mysterious, omniscient "God TV," not because He first planned it to happen.]

But Calvinism's problem (well, one problem among many) is that it mis-defines "foreknow" as "foreplan," as if they are the same thing.  I read one Calvinist once who admitted that when he read the word "foreknow" in the Bible, he simply substituted in "foreplan" to make sense of it within Calvinism.  (How nice to be able to change God's Word as you want to, so that you can keep believing what you already believe, so that you don't have to question your theology or examine it deeper.  It's nice, that is, until you have to stand before God and give an account for those beliefs.)  

Calvi-god doesn't just foreknow what will happen and then make plans to incorporate it, but he first foreplans every detail of everything that happens... and then he "foreknows" it will happen (because he already set it in stone)... and then he forces it to work out exactly as he planned - sin, evil, unbelief, and all.  

Very different!  And a corruption of the pure definition of foreknows, adding things that aren't there.  And it truly makes God the author/cause of all sin and evil, despite a Calvinist's insistence that it doesn't.

  

Making biblical sense (two examples):

I think the way I view it helps explain passages like these (whereas Calvinism's wrong view of God's foreknowledge just makes a confusing mess of it all):

1. In 1 Samuel 23:12-13, God warns David that if he stays in Keilah, the people will hand him over to Saul who wants to kill him.  God knew what would happen whether David stayed or left, but He lets David choose which path to take.  But whatever David chose, I'm sure God could and would work it into His plans somehow.  If David left, He could work it into good.  But if David stayed, He could intervene somehow and still work it into good.  But God warned David what would happen, and then He let David choose... and David chose to leave.  [But if Calvinism were true, then God foreplanned that David would leave.  And so why would God warn him of what would happen if he stayed, if it was never a real possibility to begin with?  It doesn't make sense.  And it makes His warning unnecessary, superfluous, inconsequential.  And in fact, it makes God into a liar for claiming that something could've happened that was never possible and to make it seem like David had a choice when he didn't.]

2. Same thing with 1 Samuel 13:13 where Samuel tells Saul that if Saul had kept God's commands, then God would've established Saul's kingdom permanently.  God had plans for working things out if Saul obeyed and plans for if he disobeyed.  But God let Saul choose - and Saul's choice affected which path God went with.  God did not need Saul to disobey and lose the kingship, because He could work it out either way.  And Saul chose for himself to disobey, leading to God removing the kingdom from Saul - an ending that didn't have to happen.  [But if God predestined/decreed/caused Saul to disobey and lose the kingship - as Calvinism would say - then either God or Samuel is lying by saying that God would've established Saul's kingdom if Saul had obeyed, because obeying was never a possibility if God pre-preplanned it all to happen the way it did and if Saul had no real choice.  (Or maybe Calvi-god is in the business of making up tons of extra plans that never ever had the chance of happening because he already predestined exactly the one way it would all happen.  What a weird waste of time and effort.  And it sounds kinda schizophrenic, kinda daydreamy-crazy.)]

God does not need our sins and disobedience in order to work out His plans.  He can work His plans around whatever choices we make, incorporating whatever we do into His plans for good.  He's just that big and wise and powerful!  

Unlike Calvi-god - who locks himself and everyone else into one path, who can't handle any factors but what he himself preplans/causes/controls, and who is the only one who had any real free-will choice about all the sin and evil that happens.

Erwin Lutzer (this quote was found at Examining Calvinism): "...we can say that God permitted evil, as long as we understand that he thereby willed that the evil happen." (The Doctrines That Divide, pg. 210)

Mark Talbot/John Piper (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, page 42-44): “God brings about all things in accordance with his will... he himself brings about these evil aspects… [and so we can] take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil.”

Jeff Durbin (The Madness of Calvinism) talking about evils like gang rape: “God actually has a morally sufficient reason for all the evil He plans… He actually decrees all things." 

[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]