Alana L.: 5k ("sovereign" part 3/conflations: cause vs allow)
This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist
I initially planned on 5k being four parts, but it's going to be 7. So because there's so many parts, I'm gonna post them weekly to get through it faster.
Point #5 still:
K (part 3): "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."
In "sovereign, part 1 and part 2", I looked at Calvinism's incorrect belief that "sovereign" necessarily means that God preplans/causes all things. In these next few posts, I want to further examine their misunderstanding of "sovereign" related to their erroneous conflations of "cause" and "allow"... and "foreknow" and "foreplan"... and "natural evils" and "moral evils"... and their deceptive use of the word "authors."
[There will be some redundancy in here and some review of things I said in the previous parts. I tried making it shorter and more concise, but every time I went back through it, I seemed to add more. "Sorry. My doctor says it's a compulsion" - a Malcolm in the Middle quote.😁]
Cause vs Allow
When a Calvinist says that God "allows/permits" something, be aware that they always mean that He first preplanned it and then orchestrates/causes it. And that's why He "allows" it.
My ex-pastor (November 2019): "God allows-slash-appoints tragic disasters. These are really two sides of one coin. Saying 'God allowed it' is too soft. God clearly is orchestrating what is going on here... God ultimately allowed and orchestrated these disasters."
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... 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..."
John MacArthur ("Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God"): "... all kinds of other things happen; and all of it is being orchestrated. Though God doesn’t do evil, He’s allowed evil.... But God orders it all. God controls it all for His ends."
Parsons ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "God is ultimately the One orchestrating all things. He is permitting [us to sin], but He is permitting 'not by a bare permission'."
"Not by bare permission" means that God isn't merely giving us permission to make truly free-will decisions, but that He first foreordained and then orchestrates our decisions, even sinful or downright evil ones. This is very different from the way most people define, understand, and use the words "allows/permits."
And the fact that most of us don't understand that Calvinism's definition of "allows/permits" necessarily includes "preplans and orchestrates" makes the whole thing very deceptive, because then we wrongly assume that they must believe in some level of true free-will... when they really don't (even though they still call it "free-will").
We don't realize that Calvinists often mean something very different from what they say, that they're teaching something very different from what we think they're teaching. (But of course Calvinists would do this, because it's exactly what Calvi-god does too.)
Calvinists believe that "sovereignty" must include "preplans and orchestrates," that God cannot simply and purely allow what happens - because if He truly allowed us to make our own decisions that He didn't preplan, then it would mean (according to Calvinists) that He's not in control and not all-powerful, that people are stronger than God, and that God can't work His plans out or know how to work our free-will decisions into His plans.
In Calvinism, if there's something God doesn't control, it means there's something He can't control. (So maybe we could count this as one of their conflations too: "doesn't" and "can't". And as we saw in an earlier post, they also do this with "in control" and "controls" - for Calvi-god to be "in control" he must control everything, or else he's not in control of anything. And they also conflate "No one seeks God" in Romans 3:11 with "No one can seek God," as if it means the same thing. The list goes on and on.)
In Calvinism, God must plan it all out from the very beginning in order to be God, to be in control, to be all-powerful, and to work His plans out. (And yet Calvinists think that non-Calvinism limits God - ha!) But I believe this is a Calvinist error, reading into the word "sovereign" things that aren't there.
Contrary to Calvinism, I believe that cause and allow are not necessarily the same thing. God can allow things He doesn't cause, things that happen because of our true free-will. He's still over and above everything that happens, watching it all and working it all together, but that doesn't mean He preplans or causes it all.
I believe that the Bible shows that, in His sovereignty, God sometimes truly just allows things (our decisions/sins, various natural events, demonic activity, etc.)... and sometimes He does cause things (like a particular storm or illness, or maybe putting a certain person in power, such as seen in the Bible)... but He never preplans or causes sin, evil, disobedience, or unbelief. He never commands one thing but preplans/forces/causes us to do the opposite. (A god like that could not be trusted.)
But I think the Bible also shows that although He doesn't preplan/force/cause our sin, evil, disobedience, and unbelief, He might put us in situations that force us to make our choices - to choose between good/obedience/belief and sin/evil/disobedience/unbelief - to expose what He knows is in our hearts so that He can deal with it and work our self-chosen decisions into His plans for good.
But this is not the same thing as preplanning/causing us to choose the sin we do, as Calvinists wrongly believe. Causing us to make our own free-will decisions (non-Calvinism) is not the same thing as preplanning/causing the decisions we make (Calvinism).
God can compel us to make our decision without planning/orchestrating which decision we make (except in Calvinism where it's the same thing). And He can still be a good God even if He forces us to make our decision to sin or not sin, but He cannot be a good God if He forces us to sin, as Calvi-god does.
Do you hear what I'm saying?
It's kinda like in a movie scene where Character A challenges the aggressive, violent Character B with "So are you gonna hit me?" Or a scene where Friend A challenges Alcoholic B who's tempted by a beer he's holding with "So are you gonna drink that?"
A is not forcing B to hit or drink, but A is forcing B to make his decision. And so if B hits or drinks, it was truly B's choice, even though A encouraged B to make a decision.
God can encourage people to make their decisions to be what they want to be and do what they want to do (and then work it into His plans), without Him preplanning/causing the particular thing they choose.
Except in Calvinism, where if God doesn't preplan/cause it all then He's not a sovereign God.
Assyria (Isaiah 10): This helps explain a situation like when God uses an evil nation (Assyria) to discipline Israel. We've all heard Calvinists say that God was responsible for Assyria being the wicked nation they were and doing the wicked things they did, but then God punished them for it, blah, blah, blah. (I'm using Assyria to illustrate various Calvinist conflations.)
Calvinists think this "proves" that God ultimately causes evil and that it's okay for Him to punish people for the evil He causes. [And when we challenge them on this, we get hit with "It's a mystery. God is so far above us. We can't judge God by human logic. God defines justice differently than we do. It's like two trains tracks running off into the distance. We can't figure it out until eternity. Live with the tension. Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?..." - typical Calvinist non-answers to very serious, critical challenges that can't be swept under the rug.]
But contrary to Calvinism's wrong belief, God didn't plan their evil or cause them to be/do evil; He simply planned to use the evil He knew they would choose to do. (Same with God using evil people to crucify Jesus.) He knew that they themselves would choose to be evil and do evil... and so He put them in situations where their self-chosen decisions could be used for good, to discipline Israel and turn them back to Him. He allowed them to be evil like they wanted to be*, and then He worked their self-chosen evilness into His plans. And because they themselves chose to be evil (they didn't have to be evil; they could have chosen otherwise), He could then turn around and punish them for it after using them to discipline Israel.
[*"He allowed them to be evil like they wanted to be" - I'll get into this more later, but know that Calvinists will say this same thing but they mean something very different. And it all hinges on how we want what we want, on who decides what we want.]
It's not much different than cops running an undercover sting that uses the voluntary, free-will, law-breaking decisions of self-created criminals for good, to help catch the crime bosses. And because the criminals chose to be criminals - because the cops didn't cause/force them to commit crimes, but they simply created a plan that used the criminals' self-chosen crimes for good, for justice - the cops were not responsible for the criminals' bad choices. The criminals' were fully responsible for what they chose and who they chose to be, and so the cops could then turn around and arrest them too, punishing them for their bad choices after using their bad choices for good.
Or it's like a boss or teacher strategically placing one employee/student whom he knows treats people a certain way next to another employee/student whom he knows needs to be treated that way in order to learn an important lesson. He didn't make the people act the way they do, he just - knowing what they were both like - strategically put them together and let them be themselves.
[For a positive example, we do this same kind of thing when we set up friends on blind dates - friends we know might get along well and like each other if they met each other. We don't force them to like each other or eventually get married; we just make the connection by putting them together in the same space, and then we "let nature take its course."]
Do you understand what I'm saying? Because it really does make sense, and it truly makes the criminals/employees/students/sinners (not the cops/boss/teacher/God) responsible for their sins and evil, even if God used their sin and evil for a purpose.
Whereas in Calvinism, Calvi-god doesn't just allow people to be/do evil, but he first predestines their evil hearts and evil choices, then he orchestrates/causes their evil (giving them no ability to resist doing the evil, no option to do anything different), and then he punishes them for doing what he planned, orchestrated, caused them to do. Very different! A very different god - very un-good, unjust, and untrustworthy!
[Sidenote #1: Technically, in Isaiah 10, God punished Assyria for their pride, for thinking they were in charge of themselves with no one over them, that they accomplished what they did all on their own - when the only reason they could do what they did was because God put them in the position to be able to do it. Assyria thought it was its own king, but it was really God who was using them for His purpose. They chose to be/do evil, but God got to decide how to use their evil in His plans. They didn't know it, but they were tools in God's hands. God didn't create them to be a pounding hammer... but they chose to be a pounding hammer, and then God chose how to use them. That's how I see it. And it preserves God's character and integrity, unlike Calvinism.
Sidenote #2: Calvinists still use terms like "choice/making decisions," even though we need to have at least two possible real options to choose between for it to be a real choice - which is not the case in Calvinism where we can only "choose" to do the one thing God predestined us to do.
And they use terms like "free-will, willing, voluntary," but they don't mean these in the way that most everyone else means them (that we decide for ourselves what we want to do and choose to do, without God compelling us).
They mean that Calvi-god makes sure we have the specific desires he wants us to have (which he built into our natures/wills) which causes us to be "willing" to "voluntarily" choose to do what he predestined us to do (even if it's sin and evil) - and that's the only thing we can want to do and choose to do, according to his design.
As this Ligonier article "God and Sin" says: "We are endowed with freedom to act according to our nature. Because our nature is fallen, depraved, and sinful, apart from the grace of God we freely sin... Because of our depravity, apart from God's grace, we can only act in rebellion and are responsible for our sins."
"Freedom" to choose only one path, to act only in one way?
What kind of "freedom" is that!?!
(And being held "responsible" for doing the only thing you're allowed to do, the only thing you're capable of doing? What kind of justice is that!?!)
Calvinism's definitions of "freedom, free-will, choice, making decisions, willing, voluntary" are very different from the commonly-held definitions of them! Very deceptive! (More on this later.)]
[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]
