Sunday School - Top 3 Ways Calvinists Misunderstand Calvinism

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Amen. You may be seated. All right. Well, let me go ahead and start off by saying that I enjoy teaching

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Sunday school. I consider myself pretty good at it, but I feel like the last, I think maybe of the last five times

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I've taught Sunday school, three were on a last minute's notice, and so I hope

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I'm not getting reputation as an underprepared and mediocre Sunday school teacher. But regardless, today will be one of those instances where I, yeah, where things were arranged last minute.

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So what I'm going to do for today is there's something

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I've wanted to do for a while, and once again, you know, not a lot of pulling together verses and stuff for this as I would like, but I would like to go through the top three ways

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I think Calvinists misunderstand Calvinism. You're used to Arminians misunderstanding

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Calvinism. I'm going to go through the top three ways Calvinists misunderstand Calvinism, and then if there's more time after that, we'll keep going through the

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Orthodox Catechism, which is what we were going through the other times when Sunday school changes happened last minute.

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So yeah, let's talk about, let's talk about, where is, just find my notes here real quick.

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There we go. All right. Who here, is there anyone here who's not familiar with the term

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Calvinism? Ronald, are you familiar with the term Calvinism? Okay, so let me start off with the basics.

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So Calvinism is the idea that God has predestined all things.

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Okay, Proverbs 16 .4 says that he has determined all things for his purpose.

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Ephesians 1 .4, let me just go ahead and pull that up so I quote it exactly.

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Ephesians 1 .4 says, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.

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In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, etc.

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So he has, he has predestined us for salvation, but not just us for salvation, he has predestined all things.

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It says, in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

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All things according to the counsel of his will. Romans 8 .28 says that all things work together for good to those who love

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God. So Calvinism is essentially the idea that God has arranged all things for his purposes.

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Every, every last detail that includes the actions of wicked men, it includes, yeah, various, just, just everything, includes everything.

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Now a lot of people find this very offensive. This is, this was kind of a standard belief in the

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Reformation, but nowadays in modern evangelicalism it's, it's fallen out of favor.

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So the reason it is called Calvinism is because one of the most prominent theologians of the

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Reformation, John Calvin, it aligns fairly well with his views. What is typically called

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Calvinism, the five points of Calvinism, is something that came only, I don't know, 100 years later, something like that, in the

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Canons of Dort. Forgive me for not knowing those dates more precisely, but Calvinism is not, is not something that was formulated by John Calvin.

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People have believed, believe this long before him, and it was formulated into five points long after him.

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So he's just a prominent figure that someone might appeal to, to understand Calvinism.

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He's not the formulator, he's not the originator, it's not something that he pulled out and talked about specifically as a, as a singular doctrine.

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But it is, it is reasonable to call it Calvinism. I don't have a problem with naming doctrines after men, even calling myself a

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Calvinist, that doesn't mean like in 1 Corinthians 1, I follow Paul or I follow Paul's or I follow

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Calvin. That's, that's not what I'm suggesting, it's just a good way of summarizing doctrine.

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Now the typical alternative to this is called Arminianism. So later on there was a controversy between Arminius and, why am

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I blanking on the other guy's name, Paris, is that right? Anyway, yeah, later on there's a controversy, and the key figure on the other side is

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Arminius, Joseph Arminius. So anyway, that's, that's where the title

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Arminian comes from. Now what's interesting is given Arminius' heritage and background, he's considered a

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Calvinist. Like if you look at any history book, it will talk about the Calvinist theologian Arminian, Arminius, who started

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Arminianism, right? And so usually you're used to thinking of those things as antithetical, but they are, yeah, but it's a little more complicated than that.

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Anyway, what I'm getting at is a lot of modern -day Arminians don't like being called Arminians for one of two reasons.

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One, they just don't like labels, that's kind of most people. The other one is that because Calvinism is typically broken down to five points and Arminianism is broken down to five points, a lot of modern -day

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Arminians don't believe all five points of Arminianism, and so that's what they're objecting to, is that they, you know, they believe in what typical

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Southern Baptists will call eternal security, what we would call perseverance of the saints, that you can't lose your salvation, and so, you know, because they believe that, they don't want the whole label of Arminian.

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But they reject all the rest of the things about predestination, etc., and how do you even have security about your salvation apart from predestination?

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I don't know the answer to that. They give various answers, like that,

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I mean, the worst one is basically that you'll still be saved, even if you, you know, totally go off the range and live however you want outside of God's will, etc.,

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even though the scripture's pretty clear, someone who does that is making it evident that they were never a part of God's family.

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Okay, so let's get into it. Top three ways Calvinists misunderstand

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Calvinism. Okay, well, before we get into it, how many people have had discussions about this?

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Most of the people here, I'm guessing, have talked to friends or loved ones about Calvinism in particular.

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Okay, how many people have spent serious time in online discussions about this, because this is where it often goes up.

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Kyrie, yeah, yeah, I have, I have too, yeah, yeah, and you said you're on Reddit, yeah, yeah, so way back in 2011,

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I would go on Reddit and talk about this stuff, although honestly, like, what exists on Reddit is far worse than our video does, you know, so I was interacting with a lot of weird stuff.

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I did all kinds of interesting things, too. I had a script that would go and pull all the conversations, and there's what's called

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Flare on Reddit, where you can label yourself for what denomination you are, and so I came up with all sorts of graphs showing, like, what the best days to post are for different denominations, and like, if you're more conservative denomination, you tended to get most likes on Tuesdays, but on Sunday, the more liberal denominations would get more likes.

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Yeah, it's really, really interesting stats that you can, you can figure out about this stuff, but one, okay, so one of the, one of the things that you often see in these discussions is that an

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Arminian will say something, and then the Calvinist responds, you just don't understand Calvinism, and the

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Arminian will say, well, just because I disagree with it doesn't mean I don't understand it, and so I would see that happen occasionally, but then the more

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I got into it, I realized, wow, people really don't understand Calvinism a lot of times, and a lot of times, the reason that is is because the

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Calvinists don't even understand Calvinism, and they're misrepresenting it, so here are the, here are the top three ways

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I think Calvinists misunderstand Calvinism. Okay, first one, here's, here's the first statement. Calvinists don't believe in free will.

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Calvinists reject free will. All right, that's a, that's a problem. Anyone want to give a reason why?

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Yes, the libertarian free will, right?

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Right, yeah, so chapter nine of our confession, our formal documents describing what we believe, talk about our belief in free will.

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So, yeah, we do, we do believe in free will. Just as a side note, the upcoming, there's a popular

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Reformed Baptist conference, probably the most popular serious theological conference for Reformed Baptists coming up in Southern California.

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It's called the Southern California Reformed Baptist Pastors Conference. It's a very long name, but anyway, every, every year they go through a different chapter of the confession.

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This year, they're going to be doing free will, and so I'm pretty, I'm pretty excited about that one. It's La Mirada, is that right?

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I think so. Yeah, it's, it's Southern California, yeah, near LA.

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So, yeah, just to read this chapter of the confession, you know, if you want to pull up your hymnal, it's in the back there on page 675.

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Just go through all this pretty quickly. 675 in the hymnal, the page number, not the hymn number, obviously.

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All right. God has endued the will of man with the natural liberty and power of acting upon choice that is neither forced nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

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So that is, that is the summary for will. Man is not forced to do the things he does. He does them freely, meaning that he is not, he is not forced to do them.

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Now, we might talk about his constraints, but if the constraints are all based on his own nature and not on an external forcing against his nature, then it really is him who's doing things, not, not

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God or someone else who is forcing him, compelling him. Now, it goes on in the next four paragraphs to talk about what's typically known as the fourfold state of man, fourfold state of man being in his innocence, which is in the garden, in being fallen, which is after the garden, in the state of grace, which is state that believers are in now, where they have still indwelling corruption but have been saved, and then in the state of glory, where they're rescued from that completely.

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So free will in each of those, I will just summarize here. Chapter two talks about how man has the, had that Adam and Eve, had the power to do that which was good and well -pleasing, yet his will was mutable so that he might, or sorry, his innocence was mutable so that he might fall from it, or he might fall from that state of innocency.

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So yeah, Adam had free will to do either good or evil. Now, in verse three, man by his fall into a state of sin has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.

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So as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good and dead in sin is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to prepare himself thereinto.

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And that last part about preparing himself, that's a, that's a doctrine that's called preparationism that I've never studied before anyway.

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So this is saying that once man has fallen, he is not able to do that which is pleasing God. He could do things according to God's law, but not in a way that pleases him.

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So the one who doesn't murder, a lot of people out there that don't murder, who don't love God, God isn't, God isn't pleased by their not murdering because they're not doing out of right heart to honor him.

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He is less incensed than he would be if they did murder, but he is not, he is not pleased with their obedience.

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Four, when God converts a sinner and translates him into a state of grace, that's believers now, he frees him from his natural bondage under sin and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good.

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Yet so as that by reason of his remaining corruptions, he does not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.

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So we as believers can will what is good, we can will what is evil, and when we will what is good, we never do it perfectly.

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We only imperfectly desire what is good. And then lastly, the will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to good alone in the state of glory only.

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So it's only, yeah, it's only when, when we are dead with Christ or resurrected that we will have, have a perfect will.

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Now another side note, one thing that has always gotten me about the traditional reformed way of talking about the fourfold state of man is

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I really think it should be fivefold. The intermediate state where someone is not reunited to their body, it's not the state of glory, but it's also not the state of grace.

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It's, I feel like there really needs to be a fifth one. Okay, so people think we don't have free will, but we do have free will.

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It's just a compatibilist free will. It is compatible with our nature. It is compatible with God's decree.

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I'm going to grab a tissue here real quick. So that's the, that's the distinction to be made here.

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It's between compatibilist free will and libertarian free will. So libertarian free will would say, well, the full range of options needs to be available, and the thing that determines them is within the self, not, not outside of the self.

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There's several problems with that, and one is just very basic. It's, how can, is it even possible for God to create a libertarian free will?

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How can God create something that works in a way that he didn't specifically design it to work?

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Right, how can he create something to operate according to its own principle?

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That would be him creating a second creative force in the world. If man were to actually make his own decisions apart from God's decree, it would be a, it would be a second creative force in the world.

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Now, to illustrate, maybe some of you are familiar with the problem of random number generators. How do you, how do you make a random number generator?

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Right, you could, you could flip a coin, and you could get, you know, heads or tails, but if you flip a coin, well, the coin is exactly, operating exactly as it's supposed to according to gravity, according to the flip of your thumb.

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The only thing that makes it random is basically our, our ignorance and understanding, and being able to compute everything exactly, and being able to control the flick of our thumb, that exactly, right?

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Same thing with dice. What computers often do is they'll look at the, they'll look at the

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CPU clock, and then multiply it by a real big number so that it's, it's larger than even the amount of, basically the size of the, the size of the memory to contain it, and so that it, it basically confuses the number a bunch.

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Trying to, trying to figure out how to talk about these and not computer science terms. And, and because it's really hard for a human to do that kind of calculation, you know, it looks very random, but it's not really random, it was just based on the clock, and it's, if you were to replay that point in history, it would happen exactly as it happened the first time.

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There's nothing else, there's nothing else determining it. Now, you can make a more advanced random number generator that looks at a radioactive isotope that emits radiation in unpredictable ways, or quantum behavior, or something like that, but the fact that we don't understand certain radioactive isotopes, or the fact that we don't understand quantum behavior, and are not able to predict it, doesn't mean that God isn't the one who designed it exactly to work the way it does, and that he, or that he doesn't understand it, and isn't able to predict it, right?

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And so, the idea that you, God could create a human that is able to make choices that were not part of his decree, basically he has a will that is indeterminate, where God didn't determine, you know, what the will is, or what the nature of that will is, right?

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It's just a, I don't, I don't believe this is philosophically tenable to speak of such libertarian free will.

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It's, it is like all other forms of idolatry, where man wants to elevate creatures, and lower

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God, right? And so, if God is the one who has determined all things, man is taking things away from God, as it says in Romans 1, following after the image of of men, and beasts, and created things, creeping, crawling things.

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You know, man is taking creaturely things, and raising them up, and assigning to them some characteristics of deity, would be the creative power to determine, to determine the future.

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The next problem I will mention about a view of libertarian free will, is what

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I mentioned earlier. The, how is it that we of God hasn't determined our free will, right?

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If free will is not a compatibilist free will. Well, the one answer, of course, is that many Arminians would reject that you can, that someone who is saved will remain saved.

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They reject perseverance of the saints. So, that's one easy way of dealing with it. But most Christians, most

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Arminians, would acknowledge that when we go to heaven, like that's, that's the permanent state.

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That's eternal. There will be no second fall. There will be no cycling this world over again.

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How do you have any guarantee of that? If you could go through an infinite period of time, and have an infinite opportunity to sin, and man has a free will, a will that is not determined by God, a will that it would be capable of sinning, how could you guarantee that we wouldn't fall again?

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You couldn't. In fact, it is, in fact, just the opposite. There is a guarantee over an infinite period of time, if there is any chance of something happening, that it will happen.

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Because, yeah, you give it an infinite period of time, it will happen. So, it would be guaranteed that there would be another fall, if man really did have free will, if that was so foundational.

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Sorry, free will, libertarian free will, right? Now, I suppose you could think, well, we have libertarian free will now, but we won't later.

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But that would, that would throw out most people's view of libertarian free will, because usually they're saying, this is important in order that the loving relationship between man and God be truly voluntary and truly real.

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Usually, they hinge it on that. Now, I would say, well, man is already acting freely of his own nature. Yes, it is the nature God created, but he's acting freely of his own nature.

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And so, that relationship is real. You don't need to invent some kind of special creative power in man to make it real.

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So, anyway, because they believe that, you would have to maintain libertarian free will into that eternity of heaven.

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And if that's the case, yeah, how can you guarantee there wouldn't be a fall again? You couldn't. There's just no way.

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Okay. And then, the last one

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I will mention is the freedom of God. So, because man wants to speak of men as having this kind of libertarian free will, as that being what true freedom is,

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I think what a lot of people don't realize is they're depriving God of freedom, not just his freedom to decree and create man in a particular way.

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But in addition to that, God himself acts in a similar way, constrained by his own nature.

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Now, I say constrained, but obviously not constrained from any external sources. It is just simply the way he is.

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Now, the Bible says in Hebrews 6 that God cannot lie, right?

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He cannot lie. Now, what does that mean that he cannot lie? It's not that he doesn't have the power to say whatever he wants to say.

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He could say whatever he wants to say, but he does not have the power to, excuse me, but he does not have the capacity of will to do other than what his nature is, which is good.

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So, he does not lie. He only tells the truth. And so, someone that says, well, true free will is the absolute ability, not just in like raw power, but even in capacity of will to be able to do both good and evil.

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God himself doesn't even have that kind of freedom. God himself doesn't even have that kind of will. And so, you're saying that man has a will that is freer than God's.

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So, that's another really major problem with that. But anyway, Calvinists do believe in free will.

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It's just not libertarian free will. It is incompatible as free will. It is important that we really are operating on our own desires.

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These things really are coming from us, and no one can point the finger at God and say that you made me do this.

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No, our wills are our own, and we operate by them uncompelled.

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Yeah, free from compulsion. I think that's a better way of saying it. Great. Now, the next one is related to this.

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A common Arminian argument that Calvinists will get is that responsibility implies ability, right?

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You are saying that man cannot do good apart from salvation, apart from being born again.

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How could God hold man accountable for his sins unless it really is the case that the fact that he's being held responsible shows that he is able, or vice versa, right?

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Isn't it the case that God holds man responsible? Doesn't that show that he is able? And so, what's the common

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Calvinist response to this? You might have heard this before. Just that responsibility does not imply ability.

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They say, you know, that's not written in Scripture. Responsibility implies ability. So, the fact that God holds us responsible doesn't mean that we're able, and they just kind of leave it at that.

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I think that's fairly problematic, the idea that God would hold someone accountable for something that they have in no sense any capacity to do otherwise.

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You know, the Bible says that he makes a way of escape, you know, that is particularly talking of believers.

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But—and this is, boy, this is one of those things I would have loved to find better proof texts for—but

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God holds guilty those who have truly done guilty things.

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Now, the only caveat I would add to that is original sin is credited from Adam to all who follow him, but Adam's sin, at least, was volitional.

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Okay, so what is a better response to this that doesn't just throw away the idea that, you know,

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God, in his justice, you know, is really holding people to account who have some ability to comply and are, of their own volition, doing otherwise?

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So, there are categories. I don't know if they were originally defined by or just popularized by Jonathan Edward, but he's the one who usually gets mentioned in these conversations.

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That's the distinction between natural ability and moral ability. So, natural ability is the raw power to do something, right?

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So, like, we might say that God has the natural ability to lie, right? When the Bible says he cannot lie, that's not denying that he's powerful enough to lie.

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He's powerful enough to lie. He can speak. He's capable of doing that. However, he does not have the capacity of will, and so that would be moral ability.

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So, if you distinguish between moral ability and natural ability, that gives you the capability to say that, no,

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God really is holding people accountable who are able in some sense, even though in another sense, I would say that they're not able to do what is good.

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Okay, so, walking through that again, when man sins, when unregenerate man sins, he is able to do what is good in the sense of having natural ability.

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He has a heart. He has a will. He is capable, in a sense, of doing what is right, of honoring the

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Lord, and he chooses volitionally to do otherwise. Okay, and God holds him accountable on that basis, and then as far as moral ability, the capacity of will to desire what is good, he does not have that capacity, and so that's what we're talking about when we're talking about his inability.

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So, I think that the Calvinist response here that just says responsibility doesn't apply ability is not completely true.

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It's true in the sense of moral ability, but it's not true in the sense of natural ability, and that is what makes this system just.

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I mean, God would be just no matter what he decided, because he is the very definition of justice, but I don't believe there's ever a time when

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God holds someone accountable for something that they have no capacity to do otherwise, or where there's not some volitional action.

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Once again, you know, I mentioned that guilt can be held covenantally. Now, to make another analogy, or to bring in another aspect to this, why is someone either praised or condemned?

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You know, rocks never lie, right? Rocks are always truthful in anything that they show us.

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They don't lie about anything. Why don't we praise rocks for their truthfulness?

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Why do we praise God for his truthfulness, but not the rock for its truthfulness, right? It's because the rock has no natural ability to lie, right?

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The rock only has the rock has no moral ability, period, right? It has no will, but it has no natural ability to do other than it does.

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It just is what it is. So why do we praise God for his truth and for his not lying?

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We praise God for his truth and his not lying, because he has the natural ability to do otherwise. The fact that he has all the power in the world, does not owe us anything, could lie in that sense, but doesn't, because that is not his nature.

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We praise him for that. And so praising and condemning are tied to this natural ability, and to divorce it from natural ability,

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I think, is very foolish. Okay, so hopefully that made sense.

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And I really think that this is one of the one of the weakest parts in most

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Calvinist argument, when an Arminian says that the fact God holds us responsible shows that man must be able to do what is good, and then the

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Calvinist just throws that away and says, no it doesn't. Well, it does in a sense, and that is why

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God holds him accountable, because he doesn't, because he lacks the capacity of will, he lacks the moral ability to do what is good.

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All right, next one. The end is fixed no matter what you do, right?

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So the future is fixed no matter what you do. What's the problem with this phrase? The end is fixed no matter what you do.

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Exactly, right? God has determined all things, you know, I read Ephesians 1, 11, and him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

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He works all things to the counsel of his will. So, yeah, the suggestion that, well, he works the end things according to the counsel of his will, he's decided who will be saved, who won't be saved, but he hasn't worked anything else according to the counsel of his will.

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That's the problem here, and this is essentially the main tenet of hyper -Calvinism. If you've ever heard anyone talk about hyper -Calvinism, you know, it's not

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Calvinists who bounce off the walls. It is instead talking about people primarily who reject the idea that God has determined the middle, or at least in their practice, reject that very practically.

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So, for example, there's this real great biography of Andrew Fuller and how he contended with this.

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It's very short, written by John Piper. Yeah, it's very short, but at his time, there was not a lot of evangelism being done.

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There were not missionaries being sent out because of hyper -Calvinism, because people said, well, if God determined that they will be saved, they will be saved.

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And this is often what Calvinists get accused of. Arminians assume this must be what you believe, that because the end is fixed, we don't need to evangelize or anything, and this gets repeated a ton, and a lot of them just have no idea that Calvinists actually do send out missionaries, etc.

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Anyway, this is hyper -Calvinism. Now, a lot of people think because that term hyper -Calvinism means even extra -Calvinistic.

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Think about it. It's actually removing something important. It's actually removing the vast majority of God's decree and only keeping that last part of God's decree, so it's really sub -Calvinism.

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It's not, yeah, it's less Calvinistic. And yeah, and when

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Calvinists themselves embrace this, it leads to all kinds of things. It leads to a lack of security in their salvation because they think that, well, it doesn't matter what

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I see in my life right now. I could be unsaved. I'll never know. Or they think that, you know, it doesn't matter what

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I do. If God saved me, you know, he's already saved me. And yeah, anyway, there's a lot of very practical things that happen when someone starts embracing this idea, this basically pagan notion of fatalism, right?

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This is what the pagans think of fate, and you watch any movie that plays on these themes, which there are tons of movies that plays on these themes of fate where the end is fixed, and people might try to tamper with fate, but they can't do it because ultimately, no matter what they've done, it ends up happening anyway.

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It's not this pagan notion of fate where the middle is variable and the end is fixed.

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All things have been fixed by God. He has decreed all things according to the counsel of his will. Yeah, you might see people, too, who fail in something multiple times, and they assume that means that is

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God communicating to me that I'm not supposed to do this thing. Oh, I, you know,

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I failed in three job interviews in a row. God doesn't want me to have a career in this field. Or, you know,

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I'm having difficulty meeting someone for marriage. God doesn't want me to be married, right? And so it's this idea that, yeah, that my,

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I mean, we should read the providence of God, but I think these are somewhat immature ways of reading the providence of God where you're basically associating the failure of your efforts with the fact that, like, this end is fixed and nothing else matters.

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Now, one thing that Arminians will point out, well, when they point this out, they said, look, you have this fixed end and nothing matters in the middle, which we don't believe.

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One thing that's interesting is doesn't the same apply to them? Does not their God, not that I'm not trying to claim that they're not

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Christian, have a different God, but does not their understanding of God have, isn't he one who also knows the future, a very fixed future?

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He does. Now, a lot of times they'll come back and say, yes, but he didn't cause that future. How does that matter?

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If he knows the future and the future is fixed, aren't you the one with the problem?

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Because you're the one who has the variable middle. We have God decreeing all things in an orderly way so that the one who is justified is sanctified, the one who is sanctified is glorified, etc.

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We have the orderly middle. You actually are the ones that don't. You have the problem with nothing in the middle mattering and the end mattering.

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So it's not clear how they can just respond to that and say, oh, well,

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God wasn't causing it. It's still a problem. Yeah, and just to throw out one more verse again,

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Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good to those who love God. So all things is complete.

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Everything. So just to go through those things again, the misunderstandings are

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Calvinists don't believe in free will, responsibility doesn't imply ability, and the end is fixed no matter what you do.

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Just one more example of the end being fixed no matter what you do. And a lot of people feel like this about prayer.

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A lot of Calvinists wrestle with this in prayer. Why do I pray? God's already determined what's going to happen. Is prayer really just to change me?

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Now, I do think that is a primary aspect of prayer. There's a reason why God has us engaged in this, but he really does work through prayer.

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Our prayers really do have an effect. The one who prays for something receives the answer to his prayer. James, one who prays rightly for something,

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James says, prayer of a righteous man has great power as it's working.

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It has great power. It's not just an act. Prayer truly is powerful. How can that be?

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Because God has arranged everything in his decree so that prayers will be answered. And prayer,

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I think the reason why a lot of Calvinists struggle with prayer is because it's this thing where we're very much relying on God and it's not something of our own power.

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But if this is true of God's decree about the end being determined, it really applies to everything just as much as prayer.

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And so I think people get bent out of shape just because prayer is this act where you're really relying on God and not your own power.

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So for example, it is decreed today whether or not I will be fed, right?

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Now, if I sit on that fact and say it's already been decreed whether or not

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I'll be fed, I don't need to go to lunch, I don't need to go to dinner, you know, food will just materialize within my stomach if that has been determined.

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It's very foolish, right? It has been decreed, but also the means by which that happens is decreed.

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So God decrees the means as well as the end. That's the important phrase to remember in responses.

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God decrees the means as well as the end. And if you're struggling with prayer, why don't you struggle with all these other aspects of life where the end is fixed, the fact that you will be fed is fixed, but you understand that God uses means to reach that end.

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Okay. Any questions or any thoughts about conversations you've had with people about the sovereignty of God or any of the five points of Calvinism?

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By the way, five points of Calvinism, sorry, five points of Calvinism for those who don't know are total depravity, basically man can't of his own free will choose

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God, God has to regenerate him to give him the desire to come to him. Unconditional election, there's nothing in man that causes

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God to choose him, right? It's not that I'm more humble or he's not looking through time to see whether or not

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I'll accept him if he reaches out to me, et cetera. Limited atonement, the idea that Jesus died specifically for his people and not just for every single person on the earth, in which case their sins end up getting paid for twice because Jesus paid for them and then they pay for them themselves when they, for the wicked.

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And then irresistible grace that when God saves someone he changes their heart so they desire to come to him and it's not something where they are resisting him.

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And then P, perseverance of the saints, that one who, the one who is truly in the faith will continue to the very end and no one can lose their salvation.

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Yeah, so cause is a ambiguous term because there's a distinction between the first cause and second causes.

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Second cause is something that makes something happen directly. First cause is something who started everything in motion.

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So God does cause all things in that, as a first cause, but he's not causing evil directly.

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So an unambiguous term would be he decrees all things, and that includes evil. And when

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I came around to these beliefs, this was the first, this was the first thing that really got to me. I saw,

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I was reading through the bible one day. I read in the Old Testament in Judges 14. Let me go ahead and bring that up.

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And there are, there are many examples of this, but Judges 14,

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Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother,

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I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as a wife. But his father and his mother said to him, is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all our people that you must take away from the uncircumcised

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Philistines? But Samson said to his father, get her for me, for she is right in my eyes. So this is,

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Samson should be marrying from his own people because of God's commands. He's marrying from the Philistines. And then the next verse says, his father and mother did not know that it was from the

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Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.

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So why is it that Samson engaged in this evil action of marrying outside his people, an enemy of his people?

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Well the answer is, this was from the Lord, for the Lord wished to create an occasion against the Philistines.

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So that's what I read that day, and then I read, I had a through the year

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Bible. Now I didn't finish it. I know, I'm sure that's a common theme, right? People who start yearly Bible plans and don't finish them.

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I didn't finish, but I got this far. I got to Judges 14, and then I got to, yeah this is a long time ago, back in 2007.

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And I got to Matthew 11, where in Matthew 11 it speaks of Jesus.

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He had gone and done miracles in all the cities, and they didn't repent. He says,

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Will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

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But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

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Then he says, At that time Jesus declared, So God reveals his truth to children, and says he's hidden these things from the wise and understanding.

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So why is it that many wicked men do not know the truth?

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Is because God has hidden the truth from them. Now that truth being the truth of Jesus Christ, he has revealed in creation what men must know about him, and they reject it in their unrighteousness.

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But why is it that some, their eyes remain closed even after they hear the message? It is

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God's will. Yes? Yeah, I do believe that that's talking about the scope of the gospel, going out to everyone and not just us.

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And there is a parallel text in the gospel of John to this epistle of John, and I think it's

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John 11, where Caiaphas prophesies.

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Yeah. It says, If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.

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But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, you know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation should perish.

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He did not say this on his own accord, but being a high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

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So John being the author of both these, very often, in fact, if you're reading 1

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John, you really need to keep in mind what are the parallel texts in John, because there are a lot of them, and I believe that this is one of them, that basically he's echoing the same thought from here.

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And if that's the case, what he's talking about is the gospel spreading abroad, not just to those who immediately heard it in the first century, but to the whole world.

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Yeah, and that is, I do think that as far as Lament of Atonement goes, that is probably the hardest text.

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There are other texts that people pull out as the main ones where I think, why would you go there? Let me mention, is it 2

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Peter 3? Is that where that one is? Yeah, the

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Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises. Some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

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So here we have the desire of God to save everyone. Now, first of all,

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I do believe in the well -meant offer of the gospel, which is a way of saying that God does, in a sense, desire every man to repent.

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I don't believe that this is what this is talking about, and for an Arminian to use this to say, look, God's trying to save everybody, is very problematic for multiple reasons.

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One, it directly says who the audience is. He's patient toward you. In the previous verse, it had said, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved.

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You know, he's speaking specifically to the church of God, who is beloved, that, yeah, this is the audience of whom

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God is patient toward. Secondly, what is the whole point of this passage? The whole point of this passage is to say, when is

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Christ going to return? When is the end going to come? And the answer is, when every last one of you is saved, when every last one that God is trying to save is saved.

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Now, in the Calvinist view, there are a finite number of the elect. God will save every last one of them.

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Jesus will return. The Arminian view, what does this mean, if this is talking about Christ's return?

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Saying, okay, well, when could Christ ever return? He can't return while there's still some unsaved in the earth, because he hasn't saved all of them.

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You know, the whole Arminian idea with, like, the rapture coming and all that stuff, like, no, that makes any sense given their view of this verse, because it requires that every last person be saved, or some event wipe out the world before Jesus returns, but it's

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Jesus's return that's supposed to do that. So, anyway, this is a really common verse people go through, but it proves just the opposite of what they're talking about.

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One more verse I'll mention to what Astraea said. In Genesis 50, and there are many other verses that deal with this, but Joseph is talking with his brothers, and his brothers are apologizing for having sold him off into slavery, and he responds, as for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today.

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So God decreed that wicked thing, right? They meant it for evil.

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God actually meant it for good. God used it to save the people of Israel because, yeah,

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Joseph was able to rise up to being second in command, spare the people from the famine that was to come by his wisdom, etc.,

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and that is the case with all evil that God decrees. It is ultimately for our good.

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Romans 8 28, once again, all things work together for good to those who love God, and this is especially the case with the most evil event that has happened in human history in Acts 4.

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In Acts 4 17 through 18, no, excuse me, 27 through 28.

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For truly in the city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both

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Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel. Okay, so it's talking about the crucifixion, it's talking about the specific people that came to crucify

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Christ, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. God predestined the cross.

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This is a very wicked event. The only innocent man to ever live murdered unjustly by people who didn't have any excuse on all accounts, you know,

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Pilate just washing his hands, Herod who was totally complacent, the

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Gentiles who had a hand in it, Israel who knew their own prophecies and rejected them. An incredibly evil event, but is it not also the best event that has ever happened in human history?

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So yeah, that's another thing that I have pointed out to Arminians. I say, you know, this world that we live in is better, in a sense, than the world that would exist had

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Adam never sent. You know, in this world, and by this world, you know, I don't really believe in multiverses or anything, but just using that phrasing, we will one day live with Christ forever, rejoicing in our salvation, knowing the mercy of God, which would have never been needed, you know, knowing the cross of Christ, which is how

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God has chosen to display His mercy. Whereas if Adam had not sent, there would be no need for that.

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We would just, you know, by our own merit, enjoy the things that we have, and we would not know this mercy of God in this way.

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And so I've talked to Arminians who acknowledge that, that yes, this is a—the introjectory that we're headed for is a more glorious one than the one otherwise.

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So I say, did God get lucky that Adam decided to send? Like, given that this is the better end, this evil that happened is ultimately for our good, did

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God get lucky that Adam disobeyed Him and did what He didn't want him to do?

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No, that's—God is not lucky. He really did decree

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Adam's fall for the good of His people, to create a redeemed people that would get to enjoy

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Him fully and not just know a portion of His goodness, His justice, etc.,

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but to know His goodness fully, which includes His mercy even. Other questions?

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Yes. No, please. Yeah. Yeah, it would not be—it's not for their good, that's right.

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Yeah, so it says in Romans 9, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who can resist his will?

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This is basically the Armenian conversation that we were talking about, you know, why would he condemn someone if they don't have the ability to do otherwise?

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Paul's response here is different than the one I gave because he's trying to answer the heart behind the question rather than to answer the question directly.

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He says, but who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Well, what does molded say to its molder?

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Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

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What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which

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He has prepared beforehand for glory? So, yes, some are prepared for destruction for the sake of those who receive mercy.

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This comes up several times, that basically the good that is received from these arrangements is only to God's people and not otherwise.

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Proverbs 13, 22 says, a good man leaves inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous.

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And Ecclesiastes 2, 22, blanking on the verse,

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Ecclesiastes, there it is at the end, it's 226, for to the one who pleases

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Him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner He has given the business of gathering and collecting only to give to one who pleases

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God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. So, yeah, in both of these verses it talks about how the unrighteous, all that they labor for in this life, ends up being given away, and they lose their part in it.

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So, yeah, God is, people speak of God as being omnibenevolent, you know, meaning that He is good -natured and kind, and maximally so, but that does not mean that everyone, that He has an equal desire for everyone,

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He has an equal love for everyone. Obviously, He loves His Son in a special way that is not enjoyed by all others, right?

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And in as much as we are found in Him, we have that status so that He loves us with a similar love to the way

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He loves His Son, but still His Son is unique. And, yeah, what is hatred when it talks about God hating?

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Because it does talk about God hating sinners, it doesn't just say He hates the sin and loves the sinner, it does talk about Him hating sinners.

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It is essentially His lack of love. He does not owe anyone love, and if we already accept that He loves some less than those that He loves, very little or none at all.

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It is not, yeah, it should not be too surprising, but it is a sobering thought.

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At the same time, it is ultimately for the good of God's people. One more question?

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Let's close up. Dear Holy Father, we thank you for your sovereignty, we thank you for your kindness in your election towards us.

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We pray that you would help us to think rightly about these things, that we would not elevate ourselves beyond what is true, but that we would embrace the truth and understand our place as creatures in Jesus' name.