Calvinists on God’s Sovereignty: The Defamation of God

I. Introduction

In this first article concerning Calvinism, we will briefly examine Acts 17 to establish the biblical view of God’s sovereignty, present Calvin, John Piper and the Westminster Confessions’ views, and why educated atheists use Calvinist theology to justify hating the malevolent god Calvinists present. The topic of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are discussed in depth in my Practical Systematic Theology, chapter twelve. https://stevecopland.com/practical-systematic-theology-book

I have often been asked, is Calvinism a different gospel? To be honest, considering the fact that the word ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’, then I would suggest that the doctrines of TULIP, which is only ‘good news’ to those predetermined to salvation, is not a gospel at all.

One of the most fundamental doctrines of Calvinists is the idea that no creature can ever act outside of God’s sovereign will. This doctrine has very serious implications regarding God’s character, His purpose in creating humanity, and who can be saved. When we speak of God’s Sovereignty we mean that God is all-powerful, that He has, and has always had, a plan for the world He created, and that nothing or no one can thwart His plan. This doctrine is clearly stated throughout the Bible. However, the Bible also states that human beings must make choices, and that these choices will affect us in this life, and our eternal destiny. Therefore, one of the foundations of God’s sovereign plan is that those made in His image have the freedom to choose to seek Him, find Him, and enter into a relationship with Him through His convicting them of sin, and trusting in Him by faith.

A passage of Scripture which speaks of God’s sovereignty and plan, but seldom quoted by Calvinists, is Acts 17: 24–28. Paul was preaching in Athens and was shocked at the amount of idols in the city. He was taken to a meeting of the Areopagus on Mars Hill where he spoke to these pagan Athenians. He said:

24 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’. (Acts 17:24–28)

Here we have a beautiful picture of God’s sovereignty, giving every person life and breath and everything else, determining when and where we live. And his sovereign plan was that we would seek him, perhaps reach out to him and find him, for he is not far from any one of us. Paul is speaking to pagans, and telling them why they were created. And notice that Paul continually uses the phrases ‘everyone’, ‘every one of us’ and ‘they’. Paul’s theology was that knowing the Lord was available to every person, for God has revealed himself, his eternal power and divine nature to every person so that if we do not seek him we are without excuse (Romans 1:18–21).

Calvinists seldom quote these verses as they totally contradict their theology that no one can seek God until he regenerates us, a topic we will explore in the next article. They love to quote Romans 3:11, where Paul is quoting a Psalm of David which begins with the words, ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God’. Indeed, Paul in the previous chapter has already spoken of Gentiles who by ‘persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality’ (Romans 2:7). Paul was no fool, and the Spirit of God would never inspire him to contradict himself.

My point is simple. It is a foundational part of God’s plan that all of those he has given life, breath and everything else, would seek him, reach out to him and find him. Even Calvinists have great difficulty in twisting these words to fit their theology that no one can seek, so they simply don’t mention them. Why? Because they contradict their cherry-picked version of God’s sovereignty.

II. The Calvinist View of the Sovereignty of God

Calvinists insist that God, and God alone, chooses who will be saved, and that this choice is predetermined by God. No Calvinist has any clue or explanation of how this choosing is done. Indeed, Calvin himself said it was by God’s ‘secret council’. A favorite verse used is ‘Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated’ (Romans 9:13), a verse which has nothing whatsoever to do with predeterminism. Calvin stated the following:

All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.

(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 21)

Those who are preordained to eternal life are the elect, the chosen, and only this chosen few will be spared from an eternal conscious torment in hell. No person can change this destiny. If you are one of the chosen you cannot choose to reject God, and if not chosen, no amount of repentance, seeking, or faith will change God’s mind. God rolls the dice, and if you won the lottery, you’re in, and if not, you’re doomed.

I call this doctrine ‘sola lucktora: by luck alone’.

And yes, this doctrine applies to newborn babies, little children, and even those in the womb. In Calvin’s words, we all deserve to be thrown into hell because we inherited Adam’s sin and are guilty. In Calvin’s words:

All are involved in original sin, and polluted by its stain. Hence, even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect. For although they have not yet produced the fruits of their own unrighteousness, they have the seed implanted in them. Nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and therefore cannot but be odious and abominable to God.

(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2. 8)

According to Calvin, all children are conceived guilty and are odious (repulsive) and an abomination to God. I guess Jesus didn’t get that memo. It seems that, in Calvin’s opinion, Jesus should have said, ‘keep these foul children away from me, they are repulsive and an abomination’.

Furthermore, if having only a tiny chance of winning the divine lottery wasn’t bad enough, Calvinists are so determined to paint God as an angry, unjust, and hate-filled tyrant that they teach we are all just robot-like puppets in a divine game and God controls every single human decision. Consider this statement about the Lord by celebrity Calvinist John Piper:

He is sovereign over every single human decision. We have all kinds of thinking that we do, but in the end, the Lord decides…about God’s sovereignty…it is unstoppable power and authority over all things, including the human will.

(John Piper, https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-the-sovereignty-of-god)

The implications of this statement are horrendous. God, for Piper, does not allow every single human decision, but actively wills every human decision. The difference in these statements is defined by stating that humans have no freedom to choose, in which case, God wills the rapist, the murderer, the child molester, the drunk driver, the holocaust, the terrorist, adulterer, fornicator, etc., if we believe as Piper claims, ‘in the end the Lord decides’. Calvinists such as Gordon Clark teach exactly this and stated that ‘if a man murders his wife and children, God willed those actions’.

And Piper’s doctrine is confirmed in the Westminster Confessions which state:

Our first parents were led astray by the cunning temptation of Satan and sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. It pleased God to allow them to sin, because in his wisdom and holiness he planned to order their sin to his own glory.

(WCF 6.1)

And:

God’s providence reveals his almighty power, unknowable wisdom, and infinite goodness. His providence extends even to the fall and to all other sins of angels and men. These sins are not simply allowed by God, but are bound, ordered, and governed by him in the fullness of his wisdom and power so that they fulfill his own holy purposes. However, the sinfulness still belongs to the creature and does not proceed from God, whose holy righteousness does not and cannot cause or approve sin.

(WCF 5.4)

The Westminster Confessions insist that sins are not simply allowed but rather are bound, ordered, and governed by God. Furthermore, God was pleased to allow the sin of Adam and Eve because he ‘planned to order it’. In this sense, Satan just helped God to carry out His plan.

III. The Atheist View of God Through a Calvinist Lens

Before He created the world, God decided to create human beings with no real freedom of choice and planted within them a desire for sin which none could resist. Indeed, every person born inherited the guilt of Adam’s sin and is under God’s wrath from conception. He also gave them powerful sexual desires in order that they might create as many humans as possible to satisfy His desire to enjoy human suffering for all eternity—those predestined to eternal torture and torment. He gave humanity laws they could not obey, forced His will upon them so that they couldn’t obey, and allowed millions of demonic beings to assist Him in getting humans to commit atrocities so that He had a justifiable case for punishing them.

He also created hell, a place of eternal torture and torment, a place without hope of release through non-existence. This malevolent being could only satisfy His lust for suffering by giving His creatures an immortal soul, one which could not be destroyed. However, in order to appear benevolent, He randomly chose about 10% of humanity to enjoy paradise with Him, whilst the 90% scream in agony for eternity.

Other atheists have taken this view even further, pointing out the following logical assumptions from Calvinist theology. No person ever asked to be born, and God gave them His command of an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and life for life. Yet God breaks His own standard of justice, for He demands eternal torment for 70 years of disobedience—a disobedience which could never have been otherwise. Indeed, when God decided to send Jesus to deceive people that they may have some chance of winning the divine lottery, His own Son only had to suffer for a few hours in comparison to the creatures He made and predestined to hell. Atheists often summarize their view with, ‘this is the God of love that we are commanded to worship’.

The truth is, Jesus healed every person who came to Him, He turned no one away. He fed two large crowds of people, delighted to have children come to Him, and called people to faith. If, as Calvinists claim, the Father had already predetermined most of these people to eternal conscious torment in hell, then Jesus was playing the part of a deceiver. Such is the logical conclusion, but then, Calvinists will comment, ‘you don’t understand Calvinism’.

Sadly, I understand it only too well. Indeed, I did one of my post-grad dissertations on God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. But I will leave the final word to A W Tozer from his book, The Knowledge of the Holy:

“God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”

Steve Copland