Alana L. 5k ("sovereign" 5/author vs author)

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 5): "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."  

 

This is not technically a conflation (or maybe it is), but it's a sidenote triggered by this sentence in the last post:

"[Calvinism] truly makes God the author*/cause of all sin and evil, despite a Calvinist's insistence that it doesn't."

*Bonus Note: Author vs Author

When confronted by the fact that their theology makes God the author of all evil, the cause of all sin, Calvinists will inevitably refer to the Westminster Confession: "God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin."

[As if that answers anything!  As if the Westminster Confession is the Bible!  And as I said earlier, they will also always resort to "Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  God is mysterious.  We need to live with the tension.  It's like two trains tracks running off into the distance... blah, blah, blah."  As if any of that is really a real answer to the terrible conclusions they're teaching.  But these are just non-answers that kick the can down the road, that try to convince you that there's no problem with what they're teaching, when there really is.]

Calvinists deny that Calvinism's god is the author of sin, even though he ordains/preplans it all.  And we're left scratching our heads - because we all know it's exactly what their theology really does teach at the end of it all.  

Well, recently I found a sentence in Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology (chapter 16) that might shed some light on how Calvinists think they can claim that Calvi-god is not the author of sin, when we all know he is.  

Calvinists, unbeknownst to us, seem to be using an older, uncommon definition of "author."  Normally, we all would define "author" as the creator/writer of the story, the one who plans it all out.  But there is apparently an older definition of "author" which means the actor/doer of the action (even if they can only do, must do, what the creator/writer wrote for them to do).  

First, Grudem shares the idea of an author writing a story where one character kills another... and he says that both the writer and the murderous character fully caused the death of the other character (as if the character's choice was a real choice he made on his own - ha, hogwash!  He was a tool, not a cause.).  

And then he reveals Calvinism's slippery use of "author": 

"... God fully causes things in one way (as Creator), and we fully cause things in another way (as creatures).  (One word of caution however: The analogy of an author [= writer, creator] of a play should not lead us to say that God is the 'author' [= actor, doer, an older sense of 'author'] of sin, for he never does sinful actions..."

He's revealing that there's two different definitions of author, which essentially mean opposite things [that is so like Calvinism, so their modus operandi].  One definition is about the one who wrote the actions, but the other definition is about the one who does the actions someone else wrote.  

Grudem is saying that we can say that God "authored" the play (He was the Creator who wrote everything that happens), but we cannot say that He was the "author" ("actor/doer") of the sinful actions.  

Using an archaic (and often hidden) definition of author allows Calvinists to deceptively claim "Calvinists don't believe that God is the author of sin."  

We assume they're saying that Calvinism doesn't believe that God created/wrote the sin (which just confuses us and/or tricks us into thinking Calvinism is more benign than it is)... but they really just mean that God doesn't do the sin Himself, even though He wrote/created the sins that we must do (and that we get punished for). 

It's deceptive word-games - fooling us into thinking they believe in some level of true free-will, that man is really truly responsible for his own actions, when they really don't believe that at all.

As John MacArthur and Phil ? say in "Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God":

     Phil: "... we confess that God is not the author of evil, and yet we also confess that He’s in absolute control over it... How do you reconcile?  Is it easy to reconcile those ideas?"

     John: "Well, I think yeah, it’s easy to say God can allow something that He doesn’t actually do.  He doesn’t actually act in any evil way ever; He cannot do that."

     Phil: "He’s not the proximate cause of it, is how a philosopher would say."  ["Proximate cause" and "remote cause" are bogus concepts - not from the Bible - to make it seem like man causes sin when it's ultimately only Calvi-god who does.  And once again, as we saw here in point #1, here's a Calvinist admitting that their theological views grow out of philosophy.]

     John: "No, that’s right.  It’s a matter of Him allowing it, but it is not something that God does.  I mean, that’s the best we can say."

     Phil: "Yeah. In fact, we go even further. The Westminster Confession says when God allows evil, it’s not a bare permission.  In other words, it’s not an unwilling permission.  He not only allows it, He decreed it.  He intended for this to happen, but not in a way that makes Him the author ["doer"] or cause ["proximate cause"] of evil.  These are hard concepts, right?"  

[Yes, they're very difficult concepts to understand when you get them wrong, when you redefine commonly-used words to fit your views, when they don't fit the Bible's truth, and when you have multiple and conflicting definitions of words and layers of meaning!]

This example of "author/writer vs author/actor" [and "proximate cause vs remote cause" and "to allow sin doesn't really mean 'bare permission'/merely allowing you to do it, but it means to decree/preplan for you to do it"] is typical of Calvinist duplicity and word games: defining things differently than the way most of us commonly define them and having multiple meanings on different levels that they hide or reveal as they want to, which allows them to fluidly move from one level to another as needed to soften/cover up/deny what they're really teaching and to trick people into Calvinism (people who would never agree with them if they understood the definitions Calvinists are using and if they knew the things Calvinists were hiding underneath what they're saying).    

[For the record, I don't necessarily think the average Calvinist is being slippery and deceptive on purpose, with bad intentions (but I think many of the teachers/leaders/pastors/theologians probably are because they know that careful strategy and wording is needed to make sure they don't reveal too much too soon, or else they risk repelling people, inviting opposition, or exposing their stealth Calvinism for what it is before they have a chance to indoctrinate people into it.).  But I think the average Calvinist has been brainwashed into it themselves and they're simply repeating what they've been taught, even if they aren't sure what they're saying and don't really understand it.]

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