Many people don’t understand the Calvinist view of predestination. It goes like this. We are all born with a sinful nature. Our hearts are enslaved to sin. The unregenerate have no desire for Christ. That is, they don’t want Christ as they willfully reject Him and the infinite worth of His glory. They are therefore responsible for their evil deeds and rejection of the infinite God. God has a chosen elect that He positively intervenes upon. By miracle working saving grace, God changes the heart and plants the desire for Christ within the hearts of the elect. The elect come to Christ because they want to. The unregenerate are left to themselves where they experience the consequences of their sins. There is no redeeming grace for those in hell. They stay evil forever and are punished forever. Why does God save some and not others? I don’t know. But I do know God is never obligated to be gracious to rebel sinners who don’t want to have anything to do with Him. God doesn’t rejoice in the suffering of those in hell in and of itself. He’s not sadistic. Rather He rejoices in the glories of His justice. He is infinitely precious, pure, lovely, and beautiful. Hell is an echo of the infinite worth of God’s glory. It is a place where the restraints of all grace have been removed. The punishment only hardens the heart. God punishes - people sin, God punishes - people sin, and the cycle goes on forever. The longer one stays in hell the more evil they become. Thus, the longer one stays in hell the more just God’s punishment of them is and the brighter the sheen of God’s justice shines.
“because they want to” …and here I was thinking determinism had no place for “free will”. 
Not sure what you mean Davo.
Cole, though there are various flavors, I do understand the Calvinist view of predestination as you have presented it. So now you’ve explained it to me, I know (which I knew also from previous explanations by you and by others). It is a doctrine of demons. Sorry, but that’s the way I feel about it, and I believe scripture supports me. But I still love you, Bro. We’ll have to disagree on this one; that’s all.
Why does God have no obligations to us, Cole?
You should already know what the reply to this is going to be, Cole: the view you describe totally schisms between the intentions and properties of God. God chooses that everyone be born without even the capability of doing justice (and so with no capability to choose to do justice or injustice), and then chooses than only some people will be given the capability of doing justice. Those who do only injustice have no choice, by God’s choice, of ever doing anything other than injustice – that they choose to do that which they have no possible choice of ever choosing otherwise is irrelevant.
It is thus God’s authoritative and only sole choice that doers of injustice do any injustice at all (except for those whom He elects to have a real choice between doing justice and injustice!), and God’s authoritative and only sole choice that some doers of injustice shall always continue doing injustice and never do justice.
It goes like this.
By God’s choice.
By God’s choice.
Or even to do justice at all. By God’s choice.
By God’s choice.
By God’s choice, however, first and foremost. Whatever limited agency responsibility they may also have is totally beside the point – they only have one option for how to behave, by God’s choice.
By God’s choice, duh. Which God specifically chooses NOT to do to some sinners, on the theory you’re describing.
By God’s choice.
By God’s choice.
By God’s choice.
thus doing injustice forever, by God’s choice. Also no redeeming grace for them before hell either, by God’s choice.
Sure you do. By God’s choice. On this plan God chooses for some people to eventually do justice (and for some persons to always do justice, being unfallen), and for some people to never do justice and to always do injustice (and for some persons like fallen angels to do justice and then to do injustice only forever afterward).
A totally untrinitarian theology, by the way, regardless of any contradicting trinitarian affirmations elsewhere. Also a pointlessly trivial explanation for why God, the supposed source of all justice Who is only just and not unjust, chooses to make sure some persons never do justice and to make sure other previously just persons never come back to doing justice.
Maybe or maybe not, but on this theory whether God rejoices in their suffering or not is irrelevant. Obviously God rejoices in them doing injustice and only injustice forever.
No, but whether He is or isn’t sadistic is also completely irrelevant to this theory. On this theory God glories in permanent injustice, and so absolutely chooses to ensure that permanent injustice happens. That’s unspeakably worse than sadism.
And in the glories of other people’s injustice, which ultimately and authoritatively come from God, thus He glories also in His own injustice! – on this theory.
Not on this theory. Someone can say that or type the words, and the words may even be true in fact if this theory is false. But these claims, and this theory of ultimate injustice, cannot both be true.
No, on this theory hell is a direct clanging and gonging expression of the infinite worth of God’s glory – which is both infinitely just and infinitely unjust.
There were never any restraints of grace at all previously in the theory, because no true grace was ever given to the non-elect at all.
All hail the glory of God’s injustice!
Sure, why not? By God’s choice. On this theory God sets up a way for creatures to continue to grow more and more unjust, and God actively takes steps to ensure this happens.
And God’s injustice! – on this theory.
It is legitimately and demonstrably worse than a doctrine of demons. God, on this theory, could choose to bring about the doing of justice eventually by even demons, but specifically chooses not to, for His own “glory”.
And that isn’t a feeling. That’s a sober and careful accounting of the theology and its implications.
Jason,
When the Orthodox Reformer says that God ordains something He means: either God directly causes something or that He permits something (evil) to happen. This is a truth taught in scripture. The Orthodox Calvinist doesn’t believe that God directly causes evil. For this would make Him the author of evil. Rather He permits it (for morally sufficient reasons) to bring about His overall plans and purposes. His permitting evil it is a kind of indirect causing. That is, His permission is a kind of secondary causing not a direct causing. For example: Satan gets permission from God to torment Job. God allowed Satan to take Job’s family and make Job sick. Yet Job says, “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away” and “Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil” - to which the writer responds: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips”. So, yes God makes a choice to allow evil, but He doesn’t directly cause evil. And when He punishes it - it is just. Not unjust.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vnpLmKgFL.SY344_BO1,204,203,200.jpg
You don’t know it, but I made you so that you cannot swim! I myself swim wonderfully.
So you and I go to Yosemite, and while we’re looking at the beautiful Merced river flowing through the valley, we hear a cry from the middle of the stream. "Help! Help! I can’t swim "- like that.
You jump in the water to save the person. End result - you both drown.
I on the other hand am fine, I watched the whole thing. Though I could have save either or both of you, I did not. My choice.
If you had not tried, you would in some sense bear the guilt of that unnecessary drowning.
But not me. I am not touched by the same moral imperative that you are. In fact, unnecessary drowning and atrocities of all sorts - show how much higher I am, in fact without those things, noone would know how wonderful I am.
Dave,
The unregenerate do not want God and reject Him of their own will. God is never obligated to give unmerited favor (grace) to such people. It contradicts grace if it were owed.
Nobody claims that God pours out his infinite love, kindness and grace on us because of anything we have done. I certainly do not claim that for a second. Yet I do say that God has certain obligations towards us, based on his nature. I don’t particularly like to call them obligations because it implies negative connotations of duty, rather than the overflowing joy of carrying out actions according to his perfect nature.
To illustrate this, let’s say a three year old child continually disobeys their parents. They don’t respond to discipline, they throw their food on the floor, they scream when things don’t go their way, they run away from their parents in public places; basically, their actions are filled with ugliness. Are their parents allowed to respond to their child’s disobedience by neglecting them? Are they allowed to abuse them or cause them harm because of what they have done? Of course not, because they have a responsibility, an obligation to care for their child, to look after all of its needs. The disobedience of the child in no way affects this.
God has created us with hopes, fears, pains, weaknesses, vulnerabilities - all of them are needs, given to us with a purpose. The most important need of all is himself - the creatures he has created cannot function properly - in fact, not at all - without himself. The fact that we have these needs is entirely his choice and the fact that sin and suffering exist in the world is also his choice (as Jason was saying), even if through permitting rather than causing. Thus, because God has created us with all of these needs and has allowed all of these, he is under obligation to ultimately fulfill them. I find it a flawed and fundamentally vile thing this idea that God owes us nothing. By that logic, he could abuse us most severely, torture us so that we reach infinite pain, suffering and depression and still be called merciful, kind and compassionate. The fact that you said he doesn’t rejoice in our suffering itself because he’s not sadistic indicates that you too see that his actions towards us reveal his nature and that if he were to act in an abusive, evil manner, he himself would be abusive and evil. And yet if you say that he owes us nothing, that he is not morally bound to give us any grace at all, then if he did rejoice in our sufferings, that would not impact any description of his nature. If he is not morally obligated to give us any grace at all, then he could rejoice in our sufferings as much as he wanted to and not be called sadistic.
It would seem clear this “Orthodox Calvinist” has no clue… does one suppose that in the ‘creation’ story “the tree of knowledge of good AND EVIL” just arbitrarily appeared out of nowhere, by itself, being totally insula from all else in the scenario – go figure??
Of course God can be “the author of evil”… the trouble with so-called “Orthodox Calvinism” is it cannot understand that “evil” itself is NOT sin per se but rather should more properly be understood as “calamity” – the typical CONSEQUENCE OF sin, i.e., disobedience; something God has been known to involve Himself with… why? Because He cares infinitely, and in the biblical story is shown to bring “calamity” i.e., “evil” where needed to work restorative adjustment.
On the other hand… “Orthodox Calvinism” is so characteristically devoid of genuine care concern it all too often demonstrates a meanness of spirit when it believes it to be right or a miserableness of heart when it is shown to be wrong.
My point in the ‘swim’ post was:
Sovereignty does not trump morality.
God is certainly sovereign - don’t ask me to define that - but is equally Goodness and Love.
Calvinism has certain Achilles’ heels - addressed by two of my favorite thinkers:
-AH #1 - the moral argument against Calvinism (Channing)
-AH #2 - Justice (essay by George Macdonald)
Parading out the word ‘sovereign’ to cover what are obvious moral atrocities does not mitigate those atrocities, nor give an answer for them.
Do we worship God because of His power? No - it’s His love, his wisdom, his justice, His goodness.
“Sovereign” does not mean ‘above morality’ or that His goodness is of a different KIND than ours. Greater, yes.
Feel free to read Plato’s Euthyphro if the subject interests you: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
Or better yet, MavPhil’s wrestling with the paradox: maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/ … o-paradox/
Okay, you DO REMEMBER that practically all of us here are already very well familiar (sometimes painfully so) with how Calv soteriology works, right? Many of us have had a lot more experience than you at being steadily Christian for decades, and have already studied a lot during that time, and some of us come from Protestant Calv churches.
So trying to “instruct” us on such things, especially when we know your own history here on the site, isn’t going to work. You should step up and deal with the objections you should already be very familiar are coming. That’s how a conversation works.
A completely irrelevant distinction for this point. On their theory God authoritatively chooses to set up a situation and then to make sure of the outcome by His choices (which is a point I do not dispute), and the outcome on their theory is final permanent and ever-growing injustice – which God intentionally chose to foster and bring about. THAT’S the point of dispute.
Duh. I also realize the distinctions of God’s authoritative ordination are important for any coherent supernaturalistic theism (including trinitarian theism). I’ve written literally thousands of pages on affirming such things during my lifetime and still do, seeing as how I’m not blown around by every wind of doctrine two or three times a month, but have been carefully working on Christian theology since I was 6 or 7 years old.
That isn’t what’s in dispute. What’s in dispute is what God is authoritatively bringing about in reality, whether by direct causation or by authoritative permission. Nor is God’s authoritative allowance of temporary evil in dispute.
No kidding. But (what you’re calling) the Orthodox Calvinist does believe God authoritatively brings final evil about. That’s what their system adds up to. Whether they turn around and deny what their system adds up to is irrelevant (except to their competency).
His overall plans and purposes, on their scheme, being to ensure that permanent injustice occurs. For His own glory.
Bringing about utter and even ever-increasing permanent immorality “for morally sufficient reasons”, which is what their system adds up to, is of course rank nonsense, and they realize that once it’s spelled out, so it isn’t unusual for them to jump briefly over to pretending to be Arminian on this point instead (or maybe even briefly if schizophrenically becoming Arminian) until it looks like the doctrinal danger has passed and they can go back to claiming God authoritatively chooses to make sure final permanent immorality happens.
Trying to get away from that implication by going briefly Arminian, however, as though God doesn’t actually intend final injustice but has to put up with it for other reasons, is not theologically consistent with their special insistence on God’s sovereignty – an insistence which is specially important in Calvinism as a gospel assurance about the surety of God’s salvific victory (which in turn I actually AGREE WITH THEM about.)
That is simply contradictory to what you, quite accurately to their beliefs, stated earlier. The non-elect people don’t get their abilities from any source other than God, and God could choose to enable them to do justice, and would even be competent at eventually succeeding in that goal if He chooses, but authoritatively chooses not to empower and lead them to do so.
Trying to pretend the permission is not by God’s authoritative choice, or briefly switching around to actually believing that when they get in trouble, is useless against people who possess this thing called ‘memory’ by which they can recall what was being taught earlier.
Authoritative permission. God authoritatively allowed it. But on their theology God also authoritatively chose never to lead or even empower Satan to repent and return to loyalty. Satan, by God’s authoritative choice (on Calv theology, when they’re not being temporarily Arminian), has no choice except to do injustice.
(Which is completely aside from God saying at the beginning of the story He wants and expects Satan to learn something from Job, and then saying at the end of the story that unlike Job, and unlike what Job and his friends are expecting, He’s capable of bringing Satan back to loyal covenant behavior as a gift for his little children, and that basically He’s going to do that because that’s just how awesome He is. A point that gets routinely ignored. Be that as it may.)
He isn’t merely allowing evil on the Calv system – you’re leaving out big parts of it. God is authoritatively responsible for evil and authoritatively responsible for choosing whether or not He will competently lead evildoers to righteousness. If He chooses to do so, He will succeed. If He chooses not (as with the Calv non-elect) they have no possibility of ever doing justice and so of ever even choosing to do injustice instead of justice.
That’s by God’s choice, that’s by God’s authority, that’s by God’s power – because those creatures don’t get their existence and capabilities from anywhere other than God and God’s authoritative choice whether directly or indirectly. And spiritual abilities don’t come indirectly, they come from God directly.
Not disputing God is “just” even on Calv soteriology to punish “injustice”, so that’s irrelevant.
What’s relevant is that God is Who was and is authoritatively responsible for choosing that the unjust shall never become just. Which as you yourself can see well enough (and Calvs when they add up the theological logic there) makes God the author(ity) of final, permanent, and maybe even ever-increasing injustice.
That God acts “justly” in schism with God’s own obviously “unjust” intentions, on this theory, is simply par for the course. He chooses to make sure He can always be “justly” punishing creatures which can only do injustice, because He chose for them to never be even capable of doing justice: on Calv soteriology, that’s God’s intention and He potently and surely brings it about.
And that’s the belief you’re signing up for now. Except when they try to get out of the logical implications by briefly switching to Arminianism as though God has to unauthoritatively put up with evildoers because He has done all He can short of whatever but either finally fails or chooses to give up even though He would succeed if He just kept at it. But on Calv soteriology
GOD
NEVER
CHOSE
TO
EVEN
TRY
TO
SAVE
SOME
SINNERS
FROM
SIN
AND
INTENTIONALLY
CHOSE
INSTEAD
TO
MAKE
SURE
THEY
NEVER
COULD
EVEN
POSSIBLY
DO
ANYTHING
OTHER
THAN
SIN
.
All the jpgs of book titles in the world aren’t going to change that.
They’ll make it seem more palatable by an occasional sleight-of-mind where they forget to include some important points of their system for a while, so that God won’t seem on their system to be the ultimate author(ity) of ultimate evil. But unless they change over to an Arminian system (or a Catholic analogue) where God chooses to quit or is outright defeated as the explanation of the final result of permanent injustice, their explanation for final permanent injustice is that God authoritatively chose, for His own glory, to make omnipotently sure that final permanent injustice happens: that was His plan from the beginning, and He takes every step necessary to bring final permanent injustice to fruition.
(Nor does that change in principle if annihilation is true instead, though I know some Calvs who have gone that route because then at least all injustice ceases and only justice remains being done between persons and that’s the final goal which God originally intended and potently brings about.)
If you don’t include the unstated elements of the theory, which I do keep in mind and so have supplied in bold all-caps to your quote, it looks more palatable, I know.
But you’re cheating other people, and you’re cheating yourself (and Calv authors are doing that to you, to other people, and to themselves), if you don’t consistently and coherently include it.
Yep. And yet when I’ve pointed that out to a few new converts to Calvinism, and some who have been Calvs for years, the word ‘sovereign’ appears as a panacea to explain the unstated elements. It’s like the simple “if x, then y” concept does not apply when it comes to God’s actions.
It can be frustrating.
Just on that, it’s absolutely incredible to me how many Calvinists misuse the word sovereignty. Many use it as if it’s synonymous with determinism, which it clearly isn’t. If it was, then God would be the ultimate, unequivocal author of sin and evil OR he wouldn’t be fully sovereign. Sovereignty doesn’t mean that everything happens because God determined it to.
So you get Calvinists often saying that they have a very high view of God’s sovereignty, yet Arminians view God’s sovereignty just as highly - they both see him as having ultimate power and authority. The difference is merely in how he acts with it. Arminians would stress strongly that we have free will to either choose or reject God, yet that power to choose would come from God, as a result of his own choice. So he’s still just as sovereign
What the orthodox reformer believes is that God “ALLOWED” evil to enter the world for MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE REASONS which are infinite and cannot be grasped by our finite and limited mind. Fallen man is born with no desire for the things of God. That is, fallen man does not WANT God and willfully rejects God. God is never obligated to show such people redeeming grace for grace is unmerited favor and never owed. Yes man is unable but this is a moral inability. Man still has natural freedom to choose what he WANTS. The problem is that man doesn’t WANT God as he rejects him and sins of his own will. God is therefore just in punishing the wicked with His justice. There is no redeeming grace for those in hell. They therefore stay evil forever and are punished forever as God is glorified by His justice. God is glorified by His justice and His grace. Ultimately evil exists for God’s glory and the joy of His people. God’s people rejoice in God’s infinite glory:
'Ain’t that news, lawd ain’t that good news?
Hi Cole
I can fully understand that the Calvinist needs to fall back on the ‘trump-card’:
because, with that card, one can justify murder, rape, the holocaust, absolutely anything. But if that card is used then there is no point trying to defend Calvinism rationally as you and many others try to do. The trump card is an acknowledgement that it is indefensible by those to whom God gave the knowledge of good and evil.
But (according to Calvinism) God was fully responsible for our ‘fall’ because he predestined it. He is fully responsible for our lack of desire because we have no free will.
You say wilfully but not free-will fully - because (according to Calvinism) we have no free-will and God is responsible for this.
If God is truly God, then IMO He is not obligated to anyone for anything, so I agree. But the scriptures tell us that God is Love and the entire Bible resounds with God’s totally loving nature therefore, though I would not be presumptuous enough to say that He is obligated, it is most certainly in His nature and is His very essence to show ALL people redeeming grace.
The above is just my cut on things Cole and I hope it is of some help. Other than this, I’ll leave you to your deliberations with my sincere best wishes.
John
This makes it sound as if “the glory of His goodness, love, holiness” is depended on the existence if sin and evil. Couldn’t He be these things without the existence of sin and evil? Indeed, wasn’t He all these things prior to the Fall? What need does He have to prove Himself at all? At to WHOM does He need to His goodness to be “so much prized and admired”? Could He not be “prized and admired” merely because He is, and who He is, without resorting to the diconomy of good and evil to contrast His goodness?
It mystifies me, Dondi, that such brilliant minds as Jonathan Edwards could fall for this (sorry) total crap. Maybe it has to do with eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as opposed to the Tree of Life – the life of God, in whom we truly KNOW all things. Our miniscule attempts at “logic” just don’t cut it, no matter how brilliant. – but Edwards here is not thinking logically, and you are absolutely right.