The Evil Side of Calvinism
I. Introduction
In this video/article I wish to make the case that the ‘god’ Calvinists portray is not the Biblical God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ but a demonic caricature they have created and promote. Firstly, I will briefly examine the distorted view of God’s Sovereignty promoted by Calvin and leading Calvinists, and then examine examples of the demonic fruit they ascribe to God from this doctrine by not only stating that God is the author of sin, but that He actively wills every rape, murder and atrocity committed by human beings.
Please note that the specific doctrines of TULIP are examined on this channel in detail, comparing them with Scripture, so here I will give just a brief summary of that material.
II. The Calvinist View of God’s Sovereignty
The ‘T’ in TULIP represents the doctrine of total depravity, also known as total inability. This is the foundation upon which all of Calvinism stands, and indeed falls. This doctrine has its roots in Augustine’s idea of inherited sin/guilt which was a radical departure from early church theology. The doctrine led to Augustine abandoning the teaching of freedom of the will, which he had previously upheld, and laid the foundation for a distorted understanding of God’s sovereignty.
Calvin’s Institutes, and other writings, contain over 1700 quotes from Augustine, and along with the Westminster Confessions and Canons of Dort, promote the following summary of TULIP, although contradictory statements are rife in these writings as well.
1. All human beings are conceived in total depravity, are conceived spiritually dead, have neither the desire or capability of seeking God, play no role whatsoever in salvation but are ‘completely passive’ (WC Chapter 10). In John MacArthur’s words:
Because of human depravity, there is nothing in a fallen, reprobate sinner that desires God or is capable of responding in faith. (John MacArthur, Faith Works, p.62)
This form of monergism denies God’s sovereign plan for humanity outlined in Acts 17:27 and any form of mutual relationship between God and humanity. Furthermore, the doctrine of total depravity utterly contradicts Christ’s view of children and paints God as a wrath-filled tyrant who longs to watch them suffer. Jonathan Edwards stated;
Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance, which Jehovah will hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath until they turn and spit venom in his face.
(Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Sermon, The Eternity of Hell's Torments)
And Calvinist Voddie Baucham, who refers to infants as ‘vipers in diapers’, claims that;
One of the reasons that God makes human babies small is so they won’t kill their parents in their sleep. They’re evil.
2. Monergism leads to the Calvinist view of predestination and election as it destroys any possibility of human free-will. God only calls those who He has predestined to eternal life, and the rest have been predestined to eternal conscious torment, by virtue of the misfortune of being conceived. In chapter 10 of the Westminster Confessions:
At the right time, appointed by him, God effectually calls all those and only those whom he has predestined to life. (Article 1)
In Calvin’s words;
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)
Calvinists insist that God’s choice has nothing to do with His foreknowledge of the faith or actions of human beings. In contradiction to 2 Peter 1:1-2, the Westminster Confession states:
The effectual call is freely made by God and is entirely an act of his special grace. It does not depend on anything God foreknew or foresaw about the person called, who is completely passive. (WCF, 10. Article 2)
Furthermore, Calvinists have absolutely no idea of how God chooses the elect, it is a secret known only to Him, a hidden purpose which is completely independent of His foreknowledge as stated in the Westminster Confessions.
By His eternal and unchangeable plan, and hidden purpose, God chose in Christ those who are predestined to life. This choice was completely independent of his foreknowledge of how His created beings would be or act. Neither their faith, nor good works, nor perseverance had any part in influencing his selection.
Westminster Confession (chapter 3.5)
Although God’s purpose for humanity is clearly stated throughout Scripture, Calvinists reject God’s Word and appeal to mystery rather than teach the truth.
3. The Calvinist view of God’ sovereignty logically destroys the reality of an existential freedom of the human will. Again, this doctrine goes back to Augustine whose radical change from synergism to monergism is clearly demonstrated. For example, prior to 396 Augustine taught that all men have free will. He writes,
We must not believe that God gave us a free will so that we might sin, just because sin is committed through freewill. It is sufficient for our question, why free will should have been given to man, to know that without it man cannot live rightly. That it was given for this reason can be understood from the following: if anyone uses free will for sinning, he incurs divine punishment. This would be unjust if free will had been given not only that man live rightly, but also that he might sin.
(Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will )
This statement adheres to the earliest Christian theologians such as Justin and Irenaeus who also tied their belief in free will to the essential doctrine of divine justice. But later in his monergistic ‘Grace and Free Will’ Augustine states;
The Almighty sets in motion even in the innermost hearts of men the movement of their will, so that He does through their agency whatsoever He wishes to perform through them. (GFW XL.1.114)
Luther, an Augustinian monk, claimed that human beings have no free-will and are simply puppets ridden like beasts of burden by either God or Satan, an analogy Calvin also used.
Thus the human will is like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes whence God wills…If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek. But the riders themselves contend who shall have and hold it. (Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will)
Luther’s Augustinian view of God’s Sovereignty ends up with the following conclusion:
He does not will the good because, while he wills that we all should be bound to his commandments, he yet does not will that all obey them.
This kind of thinking brings us to our final logical progression.
4. Human beings are evil because God willed them to be evil, indeed, according to John Piper, God is sovereign over every single human decision. In Piper’s words;
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 Westminster Confession basically states that Satan was doing God’s will in Eden, and if he had not succeeded, God would have ordered mankind to sin for His own glory. Consider these statements:
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)
According to these statements, the holy righteous God can, plan sin, order sin, govern sin and bind human beings to sin, but cannot cause or approve sin. At the very least, this is a schizophrenic deity, and at worst a deceitful and malevolent being who creates mindless, yet sentient puppets and orders them to commit sin, and then blames them so that he can enjoy tormenting them. This is not the God revealed in Scripture and through the person of Jesus Christ. Calvin subscribes to this view, but in order to try and state that God is not responsible for sin, appeals to God’s secret will that imbeciles cannot understand. In his words:
I have already shown clearly enough that God is the author of all those things which, according to these objectors happen only by his inactive permission… No, when we cannot comprehend how God can will that to be done which he forbids us to do, let us call to mind our imbecility.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2008), 1.18.1 and 3:136, 138-39)
And,
Men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on anything but what he has previously decreed with himself, and brings to pass by his secret direction.
(John Calvin, Inst. I.xviii.l. 1559 edition. See A.N.S. Lane, “Did Calvin Believe in Freewill?” Vox Evangelica 12 (1981): 73)
To state that God can will that which He forbids us to do displays a total ignorance of the character of God, and certainly an excellent example of imbecility. The logical outcome of ascribing this unbiblical view of God’s sovereignty is to create a caricature of Christ which, in my opinion, is utterly demonic.
III. The Demonic ‘god’ of Calvinism
To suggest that God, by His will, brought about the horrors of the Nazis or sexual abuse of a child, is abhorrent to the ears of those who know and love Jesus Christ, yet this is exactly what Calvinists such as Mark Talbot, John Piper and others both teach and believe. We begin with Talbot and Piper.
God brings about all things in accordance with his will. It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those that love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects…This includes God’s having even brought about the Nazi’s brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child.
(Mark Talbot, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2006) 41-42)
How could anyone who calls themselves ‘christian’, claim that God, not just reluctantly allowed the horrors of Auschwitz in order to maintain free-will, but actually brought them about, that He actively willed them? This is to ascribe the demonic to God. Gordon H. Clark insists that a man may also murder his family by the sovereign will of God;
I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do it. Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything. There is absolutely nothing independent of him. He alone is the eternal being. He alone is omnipotent. He alone is sovereign.
(Gordon Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation, (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian & Reformed), 1961, 221)
Clark at least has the honesty to state that his Calvinism teaches that God is the cause of sin. If Clark is correct, then God is the murderer behind the weapon. The late R.C. Sproul stated;
God wills all things that come to pass…God desired for man to fall into sin. I am not accusing God of sinning; I am suggesting that God created sin.
(R.C. Sproul, Almighty Over All (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999), 54)
According to Sproul, although God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, He desired that they disobey Him. According to this defamation, God did not sin, however, He desired humans to sin and created sin. It was not Lucifer or Adam and Eve who created sin, but the holy and righteous Lord. Which ‘god’ did Sproul believe in, for this is not the holy Lord of Scripture. When asked about whether or not God is responsible for a child being raped, Calvinist James White replied;
Yes, because if not then it’s meaningless and purposeless and though God knew it was going to happen he created it without a purpose… and God is responsible for the creation of despair… If He didn’t then that rape is an element of meaningless evil that has no purpose.
(James White, http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-it-is-important-to-go-back-to.html)
What possible meaning or purpose does White imagine God seeks in causing the rape of a child? One wonders if White has ever read Jesus’ words regarding children. Vincent Cheung, like John Piper, insists that even the thoughts of men are decreed by God and therefore, evil is not simply permitted, but actively decreed, commanded, by God. In his words;
God controls everything that is and everything that happens. There is not one thing that happens that he has not actively decreed – not even a single thought in the mind of man. 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. Since we have shown that no creature can make completely independent decisions, evil could never have started without God’s active decree, and it cannot continue for one moment longer apart from God’s will. God decreed evil ultimately for his own glory, although it is not necessary to know or to state this reason to defend Christianity from the problem evil.
(http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/ProblemEvil.htm (March, 2013)
On the contrary, if you are going to state that God actively decrees evil you had better have a very good reason for making such a claim. The entire Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation states that our holy and righteous God hates evil.
In Summary
Which ‘god’ do Calvinists worship, the ‘god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) whose heart is thoroughly evil and does all he can to cause sin, or the holy and righteous Lord who abhors all evil? To teach that God is the cause of sin and evil, that He desires human beings to sin, that He actively brought about the atrocities of the Nazi extermination of millions, that He wills a man to murder his family, or the rape of a little child, is utterly evil in itself.
In my opinion, no person who knows the Lord Jesus Christ can possibly hold the views of Calvinists stated in this video/article. I pity such people, for when they stand before God, they will be judged on their blatant defamation of His character and for ascribing to Him the actions of demons and wicked human beings.
I pray this video/article has been enlightening for you. If you are a Calvinist who holds to the same view of God’s sovereignty as those quoted in this video, you need to repent, and more importantly, you need to ask yourself if you know Jesus Christ at all.
God bless