Alana L. 5k ("sovereign" 6/conflations: natural vs moral)
This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist
This is the last of the "conflations" posts, but there's still a few more 5k to go.
Point #5 still:
K (part 6): "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."
Natural vs Moral
On a slightly different track:
If you listen closely when Calvinists talk about God's "sovereign control" over things, they'll often emphasize His control over nature, even bringing up verses about it. And since we agree that God caused/controlled something like a storm or famine or illness at some point in biblical history, Calvinists will then make us think that we must also agree that He causes/controls human decisions and moral evils too. That if we accept one, we must accept the other.
Vincent Cheung (The Problem of Evil): "God controls not only natural events, but he also 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, as if anything can originate and happen apart from his will and power."
R.C. Sproul (What does it mean that God is sovereign?): "God is sovereign, not we ourselves, and His sovereignty extends to all things, not only the creation of the world but the sustaining and governing of the world, and what we describe as the laws of nature only describe the ordinary ways that God in His sovereignty governs nature... That God could be involved in catastrophic events or in the evil actions of fallen humans beings becomes a matter of national human interest when catastrophic events such as hurricanes and tsunamis occur. People say 'This is an accident of nature.' But even the insurance companies have enough sense to call these things 'acts of God.' When we go beyond natural calamities and look at calamities foisted on us by human wickedness, we find it all the more difficult to think that God's sovereignty could somehow be behind it.... He is sovereign over nature. He is sovereign over history and human affairs."
John Piper, What is the Sovereignty of God?: "Then, you can test those general statements about God’s sovereignty with lots and lots of examples... The Bible has lots of examples. The Bible talks about God being sovereign over many specific places: seemingly random events, nature, animals, nations, human decisions..." After giving verses about God's sovereign control of seemingly random events, nature, animals, and nations, Piper then gets to God's sovereign control of human decisions, including sin.
[If you read that article from Piper, you'll see that he defines "sovereignty" like this: "When we say God is sovereign, we mean he is powerful and authoritative to the extent of being able to override all other powers and authorities. That’s my effort at a definition. Nothing can successfully stop any act or any event or design or purpose that God intends to certainly bring about. That’s my definition."
What a deception! Because, as we know, Calvinism's definition of "sovereignty" is not just about God being able to override all other powers and authorities, but it's about Him first preplanning/causing them to do what they do and then He overrides it. Playing both sides of the chessboard.
It's not about Him planning certain things and working out His plans regardless of what we do, but it's about Him planning and causing everything that happens and everything we do, including our sins, evil, and unbelief. Calvi-god doesn't work out his plans in spite of our sins; Calvi-god's plans are our sins.
As Piper himself confirmed elsewhere (in "Has God Predetermined Every Tiny Detail in the Universe, Including Sin?"): “Has God predetermined every tiny detail in the universe, such as...all of our besetting sins?... Yes, every horrible thing and every sinful thing is ultimately governed by God…a sovereign God who governs the dust motes, the waves (including tsunamis)... He controls everything, and he does it for his glory and our good.”
And Mark Talbot/John Piper (editor) (in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, page 42-44, 70-77): "God brings about all things in accordance with his will... he himself brings about these evil aspects... 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...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.... 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.... 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..."
How different this is from merely "he is...able to override all other powers and authorities... Nothing can successfully stop any act or any event or design or purpose that God intends to certainly bring about."
So never fall for it when a Calvinist makes it sound like they think "sovereignty" is merely about God being over everything or that He can override people's decisions or that His plans can't be stopped. They always really mean so much more than that, that He preplans/causes/controls all things, even sin and evil.
(So I guess we could call these Calvinist conflations too: "If God's in authority over it, it means He controls it. If He overrides it, it means He first preplanned, orchestrated, caused it. If He planned one thing, He planned everything.")]
Anyway, as we saw at the beginning of this post, Calvinists also conflate "natural evils" with "moral evils," lumping them into the same camp and treating them as the same thing. The way they see it, if God decrees/causes natural evils (storms, illnesses, famines, etc.) then He must also decree/cause moral evils (abuse, betrayal, murder, etc.)...
... as if causing natural disasters is anywhere near the same thing as causing moral evils.
[And I could also bring up the fact that they also conflate verses about God choosing people/nations for a job with their idea that God chooses people for salvation, believing that verses about God choosing people for a task proves that He chooses who gets saved.
And how about the fact that they wrongly apply verses about the disciples or Israel to all people nowadays, saying that verses about Jesus choosing His disciples or God choosing Israel to be Jesus's bloodline are about God choosing who gets saved and who doesn't.
It's ludicrous - because the first one in no way, shape, or form implies, relates to, or leads to the second one. Being chosen for a job/role/blessing is nowhere near the same thing as being chosen (or passed over) for salvation. This is Calvinists totally taking Scripture out of context. And it happens all the time, all over the place.
But as I said, I could bring that up... but I won't.😉]
But contrary to Calvinism, there is a huge and significant difference between causing natural "evils" and causing moral evils/sins - because God doesn't command against the first one, but He does command against the second.
And so God can cause a storm and still be holy, righteous, good, just, and trustworthy. But He cannot preplan our sins and evils, then command us not to do them, then control/cause us to do them, and then punish us for them... and yet still be a holy, righteous, good, just, trustworthy God.
These are two wildly different things! But Calvinists lump them into the same category because it supports their twisted theology, making us think that if we accept one then we must accept the other.
(Also keep in mind that just because a verse says God caused one storm or famine or illness at some point in history does not automatically mean He causes them all. Just because all monkeys are animals doesn't mean that all animals are monkeys. We cannot take one verse about one particular situation and apply it to everything. But this is another error Calvinists often make.)
God is in control over all, but that doesn't mean He controls all. Just because He causes a storm doesn't mean He causes all storms and all moral evils too. Just because He foreknows what will happen - and allows what happens - doesn't mean He preplanned it and causes it to happen and that nothing different could've happened.
These are Calvinist errors.
Yes, He does control/cause some things, when He chooses to (but not sin, evil, or unbelief). And yes, He does have plans and goals that He's working everything toward (but that doesn't mean He planned/causes everything that happens along the way).
But for the most part - because He set this world up with free-will humans, with angels and demons that also have a level of choice/freedom, and with natural processes that He allows to function freely within limits according to natural laws - He is "in control" over all not by controlling all, but by deciding what to allow or not allow, when and how to intervene, when to give us choices and when to decide things Himself, what the consequences should be, how to work things into His plans, how to bring good out of it, etc.
But overall, He gives us free-will and an awful lot of room to make real decisions that affect things - because He wanted real people and real relationships, not robots.
