The Calvinist's God

The Problem of Evil and Divine Sovereignty

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham, David Kassin, and Andrew Hudson.

We have quite a few more questions about Calvinism and tangential subjects, but we've got a couple questions here that we thought would be good to read in tandem, and then work from there on what the Bible says about some of the realities that we find about the question of evil and maybe some accusations that we might get due to our positions on it.

So we'll start with the first one. It reads, I'm still having trouble answering objections to Calvinism about the evil issue or the question of evil. How do we get around the idea that evil exists without blaming God?

Does he cause all things or just some things? Do you want me to read the second one to go ahead or do you want me to go with that one?

Well, let's start with this one and then push the envelope with the second, I think. It's a question that's been asked many, many times and not even particularly an issue about Calvinism.

Yeah.

As soon as you posit God being all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, eternal, unchanging, and all good, the same objection can be charged, can be used against the Christian conception of God, the biblical survey of the attributes and character of God.

This problem of evil is not solved by saying, oh, I'm an Arminian or semi-Pelagian, rather than a Calvinist. The problem of evil still remains. So I think it's, first of all, it's good to observe that.

How is that so? Because simply by saying, if God is sovereign over all things, including the free agency of man, that God is working all these things and he is sovereign over everything, even sovereign over evil, well, then that makes him the author of evil.

Well, I don't think that's what the Bible says. I don't think the Bible says that he does evil. I don't think the Bible says that he's unrighteous. The Bible does say that he knows all things and is all-powerful and he's all good.

If you say, well, God in his power, in his might, in his sovereignty, makes space for true human agency, true human freedom, and that is the true source of evil. God does not take control over human actions.

He has no sovereignty over human action. He, in his sovereignty, limits himself from that out of love, out of goodness, or whatever the proposition is. My question is, is he all-knowing? My question is, does he still sustain the universe and the earth?

Does he still provide life to these free-acting evil agents, yes or no? And at some point, a Bible-believing Christian is going to say, well, yes. So he is still responsible. He's not the author of evil, but he is sovereign over everything.

He is not culpable for evil, but he's in charge of it. So you have to recognize it's not a Calvinist issue. It's a Bible issue. And this is where the open theist, in rejecting the clear claims of Scripture, has to go into this corner and say, God doesn't know the future.

He is not omniscient in that sense. He has absolutely no way of knowing exactly what's going to happen next, and that's the only way that true, free human agency can be preserved. And therefore, that's the only way to get God off the hook.

And that's philosophically sound, but it's not biblical.

Yeah, it's philosophically permissible. I don't know, I mean it.

Well, given the assumption that you have a libertarian free will, then that is philosophically tenable, but you have to identify that assumption from the get-go.

Yeah, now very often, the reason why it becomes a Calvinist issue is because the Calvinist is just being comfortable talking about it and willing to engage on it and to not put it to the side. But you can't get away from it if God's all-knowing, if God's all-good, if God's all-powerful.

As soon as you believe the God of the Bible, you are immediately confronted with questions about, well, then why is there evil? Why is there suffering? And you know, the Bible is full of answers. The Bible is full of answers about that, about Adam and Eve and sin and about God's righteousness, stories throughout Genesis that showcase this issue.

What about the story of Joseph? Look how God is ordaining and structuring everything for the good. What about Job? What about the psalmist's cries and prayers and later on his celebrations and his rejoicing in the answered prayers?

And what of the cross? What of the prayer of the church in Acts 4? Gathered against your Christ, against your Messiah, were the Gentiles and the Jews to do exactly what your hand predestined to occur, which was an evil, evil act.

I mean, it's the greatest crime in history is the murder of Jesus, the only truly innocent man. I mean, you mentioned Acts 4. Acts 2 says the same thing. It says that this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

So if God is completely sovereign, he is all-powerful and all-knowing, so this is the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, he's all-powerful and all-knowing, and you killed Jesus and it was killed by the hands of lawless men, these sinners.

So given that, given what we've just said, and that if God is all good, how is God not the author of that evil, the crucifixion of Christ?

So when we're talking about the author of evil, what we're getting at in that is that God is culpable of the evil, he's inventing evil, he's the one who is evil in and of himself because it's coming out of who he is.

The author, the head, the source, the origin.

Like it emanates from his nature somehow.

So there's a confusion. Evil is not a substance. It's not a sticky goo that got onto some stuff. God, when he made everything, he made it very good. God didn't create evil. Evil is an interesting word, especially from the Hebrew, that deals with perversion and a twisting of what was already there.

God is light, God is truth. Evil comes in through a twisting and a perversion and a lying, and we know who the father of lies is. But God is the father of light, with whom there is no variation nor shifting shadow.

Therefore, there is no perversion. Therefore, there is no evil with him. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. So he's not evil at all.

Now James says that in the context of various trials and difficulties and things that are miserable, things that are difficult, things that are sad, things that include suffering, and yet, they all pass through the hands of the unshifting heavenly father, and what does he do with it but bring about good?

Now, given all of that, and David, I appreciate you reading that out of Acts 2 and of course, Acts 4 affirms the very same thing. We have here humans being held responsible for doing evil acts, while at the same time, God's taking credit for orchestrating wonderful good through it all.

We have to have a very small view of God's sovereignty. We have to have a small view of God's sovereignty to make him the author of evil. If we reduce God in our minds, if we reduce God down to some minimalist cause and effect type of situation, then we end up with a God who's the author of evil, if we shrink God down, but God's sovereignty is so great and so vast and so unfathomable that he's perfectly good, perfectly righteous, perfectly in charge, and evil exists in this world.

Evil is done in this world, not so much that it exists, but it's done in this world, and we can see what evil looks like. Now, the classic passage is in Romans 9, where there is a distinction between Jacob and Esau.

Now, it was said to their mother, Rebecca, in verse 12 of Romans 9, this is a recollection, it was said to her, the older shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob, I have loved, but Esau, I have hated.

Some commentators are gonna insert here, this is about nations and not individuals, as if Jacob never lived, as if Esau was a myth and didn't exist. Jacob actually lived, and what a bum that guy was. Esau really lived.

He despises birthright.

Yeah, what an arrogant fool that guy was, but God set his love on Jacob, the trickster, the supplanter, the deceiver, the swindler. He put his love upon Jacob, and he hated Esau. He hounded Jacob, would never leave him alone, and Esau, he left alone.

Genesis 36, the whole history of Esau, God just let him go.

Quick question on that, I don't know, this may be a side thing, but with that reading of Jacob, the prophesying about him serving, or him being served by the elder, what they did, would we read that as an act of faith, knowing that he is the one that is actually supposed to be blessed?

Yeah, they went about it the wrong way.

Okay.

Through deception.

Yeah, through deception and so on, but once again, God just keeps on proving his sovereignty and bringing about exactly what needed to happen anyway.

So was Isaac, are we saying we were thinking that Isaac was going to go ahead and bless Jacob over Esau?

So, yeah, all the what ifs, right?

Yeah, the biblical story, it does not go into that, right? It's silent on that point.

Since we don't have middle knowledge, and we're not Molinists, we can't really speak to that, but the point is made in Romans 9, that the children not yet being born, not having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, meaning not of works, but of him who calls.

And also, if you go back, the idea is about injustice in God, right?

Is there injustice?

Is that actually just to do that?

Exactly.

Is it just for God to be able to do that?

In other words, is he an author of evil?

Is it good or evil?

Yeah, is he an author of evil? Is he culpable? Is he guilty of being unrighteous? That's the question.

Yes, that is the question.

Men have that question. We're made in God's image, who are we to question him? And yet, because we're made in God's image, we have a passion and a concern for righteousness, for justice, for good. We have a concern for that.

Now, in sin and depravity, that gets twisted, okay? However, we still ask the question. And this is why we laugh at Doug Wilson's definition, two tenets of atheism, there is no God and I hate him. Okay, but why do atheists hate the God that doesn't exist?

Because he's so unfair, okay? It's twisted in our hearts, okay? But so this is the question in verse 14 of Romans 9, what shall we say then? Is there in unrighteousness with God? Certainly not, may it never be, God forbid.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So it's all entirely up to God. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

And then the example is for Pharaoh, right? So the scripture says to the Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my power in you. Proverbs says God has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of judgment, okay?

So he says, I will show my power in you that my name may be declared in all the earth. So God has an aim, an objective to glorify his name in all the earth. Therefore, Paul concludes, he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills, he hardens.

It just comes down to the will of God. You will say to me then, here's the objection, and everyone knows it's coming. We feel it building in our own minds as we read the text. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?

How can he hold men responsible for their own actions if it's all down to whom he wills, he shows mercy, whom he wills, he hardens?

So this questioner, just like many philosophers before him, is asking the same question that Paul is asking rhetorically right here. It's the same question.

It's the same question still being asked, and it's the question that is implicit in the accusations against Calvinists. God sounds unfair. God sounds like he's evil. The way that you describe God, it sounds like you're making him guilty, but it's not that there's a Calvinist God versus an Arminian God.

There's the biblical God, there's the God revealed in the scriptures, and whether you rejoice in Romans 9 or skirt around the edges, we still have the same issue. So the answer is, why does he still find fault for who has resisted his will?

Okay, it's like, I can't resist the will of God, can I? So why am I still being held accountable? Verse 20, Paul replies, but indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Remember, you're a man, he's God.

Who are you to reply that way against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? And he goes on to talk about, the potter gets to make whatever vessels he wants.

Now, in a sense, Paul doesn't answer the objector on the grounds that the objector comes to him with. He does not answer the fool according to his folly, lest Paul be like him. But he does answer the fool according to what his folly deserves, so that fool is no longer wise in his own eyes.

And so what does he do? He immediately, through his next metaphor, makes the gap between the creator and the creature, so much bigger than the questioner realized. We're not dealing with a judge who is slightly elevated than us.

We're dealing with a creator who's so far beyond and above us that we're like a lump of clay compared to an artisan. That's a pretty big gap. So what business do I have making the mistake of Job, all over again, pointing the finger at God and saying, I do believe you're unrighteous?

So what this questioner had asked, and this is an objection to Calvinism, problem of evil, one of those objections to how a Calvinist would describe the problem of evil, if it is, you could indeed call it a problem.

And you chose to go to Romans 9 and said, God is in charge, what he does is just. He is good and what he does is good. And you're not gonna quite understand that, but who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

While you had referenced Molinism and you had referenced open theism, are those attempts then to answer the question without jumping right to who are you, oh man? I mean, the open theist, that's the one that allows for that libertarian free will, that's the one where God doesn't exactly know the future, so it allows for that free will.

And then the Molinism, that's the middle knowledge joke where God knows all possible futures and then chooses that one, and so that those people who would have chosen him in that particular universe, there's like a whole chessboard analogy, it's crazy.

But you're saying that the Calvinist answer really isn't a Calvinist answer. You're claiming it's the biblical answer, it's Paul's answer. This is the sovereignty of God. I would add to that, it's a verse that you've quoted before, I think some of you guys at this table have quoted this before, but it comes out of Isaiah and it says 46, nine, for I am God and there is no other.

I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish my purpose. God knows, God's God and the idols are not because God knows the future.

How does he know the future? Because he causes it. It's a very different answer the Bible gives than the open theist.

Yes, yeah.

I was just reviewing some of my other books and there was a kind of a debate book and one of the authors was contending for Molinism as a more biblical accounting for infralapsarianism than the traditional Calvinist positions.

But what I thought was interesting, where it hits home is this, the author just out and out admitted near the end of his essay, I would rather have the Molinists task of explaining the mystery being located in the character of God, than the Calvinists task of trying to explain the mystery at the edge of God is the author of evil.

So for this Molinist, he's saying Molinism moves the mystery away from this accusation. God, you're the author of evil. It appears to be, I'm concerned about this and trying to defend that. He said, I don't want to defend that.

I would rather defend mystery at a different location and the location would be something about the character of God in the way that he was formulating his Molinism. He says, I have a better defensive position over here and I highlighted that as I read through and I realized that's not where the Bible puts the mystery.

You put the mystery where you feel more comfortable.

It sounds holier, but in character of God.

Yeah, great, you outmercied God. You are more compassionate than God. Wow, but the mystery is placed where it's placed and it's not just Romans nine. It's placed all over the Bible. That's where you come up against the mystery and you stop and you bow the knee and say, I am not God and he's righteous.

I know he's righteous and you have to leave it there. I mean, others have tried to philosophically try to explain every last minute detail, but then they fall into all the pitfalls of rationalism.

So is the stumbling block or the offensive part of this that it is mystery and it can't be explained to people or at least it's not explained sufficiently in the way that they want it explained to them?

Yeah, the secret things belong to God and reveal things for us and our children, but we haven't, we think we're sophisticated. We think we've come to the edge of something that is really high level. This was the same point of no return presented to Adam and Eve, right?

Is God really good? That's the essential question. If he was really good, then he would want you to be like him. Why didn't he do it that way? Why did he keep something back from you? Why is he constraining you?

Why is he saying no? Why would he say yes to all these and no to that tree? Why would he contain you and constrain you in that way? Is God really good? Why would God choose these for grace and these for wrath?

Is God really good? This isn't a Calvinist issue. This is a human being issue as creatures before the face of a holy God. What are we gonna do with it? So Adam and Eve, like, you know what? We're gonna take the notion of morality and goodness, the knowledge, the objective definitional knowledge of good and evil out of God's hands because he's been proven untrustworthy with it.

He's done a bad job defining good and evil and so now we're going to do it and look what happened.

That's the Luciferian doctrine in a nutshell.

Very, there you go.

It is.

It's pervasive in society and I think it's one of the reasons why people ask that question.

Yes, well, and C .S. Lewis has that book, God and the Dock, but God should never be in the dock. God should never be in the witness stand with us in the jury or in the judge, in the prosecutor seats, pointing the finger at him.

Should never be that way.

Yeah, Paul definitely put a large gap when asked this question. His appeal wasn't to go to some nature of God, but it was the authority, the creatureliness and the creatorness. That's a huge difference in the way we try to frame the response generally.

We generally try to frame the response like, well, what does it mean, author or evil? Can you define that? It's left in his realm. It's left in his realm to do as he pleases.

Yeah, and there's mystery there. I don't think it's profitable to go into all of the various philosophical terms of agency versus means and all these different, the answer's not there. I think the answer in this engagement is to back up a few steps and say, even if we weren't talking about predestination and election, that problem still exists.

So is this part of the knee-jerk reaction to separate God into two different gods, one of the New Testament and the Old Testament, as well?

I think for some people, I think that it's just kind of, I think the casuals do that.

Okay.

But I don't know of anyone who

I still see stuff on YouTube with, well, the New Testament God is not the Old Testament God. The Old Testament God's actually, it's the demiurge, stuff like Gnosticism. You start to go into that type of thing.

I sat in a I still see it. In a class, an online class of the church I grew up in where he was talking about the prophet Daniel. We were going through that, and he made the claim is that I had asked a question, because he said, God doesn't judge.

As we were going through one of these chapters, and I did this as a favor to my mom, actually, as I was going through it, and this guy, this rector, he's like, well, I mean, he literally uses the word judge, like in this chapter, and he says that God doesn't, and then so my question to him was, well, don't we, doesn't God, I mean, that's the whole purpose of why they were in Babylon in the first place, they're being judged.

I mean, that's what he references Jeremiah. So Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, all say that they're being judged for their idolatry, and then he says, well, we're Christians, and we worship Jesus, so I worship Jesus, and I'm just dumbfounded.

That wasn't one that wasn't an answer to the question, but I just like, so he separated, he did that exact thing, he separated them.

Well, he also just said, Jesus is just another God in the pantheon. That's what that language is.

Sure, he is his preferred idol.

Yeah, well, he's my God, we can all,.

That's a really confusing answer.

It sounds like he's working with an abridged version of the New Testament, too.

He was just justifying, God doesn't judge, well, the God I worship doesn't judge.

Redacted.

The redacted edition.

There's a lot of those.

Not unique.

To add to the confusion, there's a follow-up objection when thinking about God just being too sovereign and too in charge for his own good in our conception of him, so if he's just too much in charge, then he ends up being evil.

Too much power, there's no possible way that he can retain his goodness, and so there's a follow-up objection in our question. We got a one-two punch here, right?

Yep.

And the first one is kind of pitting it like this is a Calvinist issue, you end up making God the author of evil, but actually, it's just a biblical issue. Anyone who believes in the Bible is gonna be confronted with that.

Calvinism, Allah, and the Quran

Yeah.

And the follow-up question reads, have you ever heard slash. How would you respond to the accusation that the Calvinist God is more like Allah than the actual biblical God?

This is a very popular argument post -911. It's a great way to slap Calvinists around. Speaking of Allah, speaking of, this is something that would come up a lot to add an emotional charge to the accusation.

However, studying the God proposed by Muhammad, conceived by Muhammad and built by his followers and his interpreters and his redactors, over the course of time, the kind of God that is proposed in the Quran is different than the God of the Bible, and if we're going to be very objective and read, perhaps, a Calvinist confession about who God is and then go read an Islamic description of God, you're gonna find two different gods, very different gods, and there are some simple ways in which they are different.

One, Allah is conceived of as non-Trinitarian. Calvinists believes in a Trinitarian God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation and creation and so on. Allah did not make man in his own image, but God, the God of the Bible did, and a Calvinist would believe that.

The Muslim God, Allah, could not be in Trinitarian relationship and cannot create man in his own image because he is utterly transcendent, utterly transcendent. We know about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as the unpardonable sin in Christianity, right?

Right.

The highest, greatest sin in Islam is shirk, wherein you compare Allah with anything. Allah is incomparable. He cannot be compared to anything or anyone. There is no analogy. He is so far transcendent, you just can't believe it, pun intended.

Huh.

But here's the point. Allah, as he is described in the Quran and by the interpreters of that, Allah just does whatever he wants and is not bound by his own promises and word.

He is the greatest of deceivers.

Yes.

Now, why is that theologically consistent for Islam? Because if Allah says a word and then he's bound to that word, then he's being compared to that word in parallel with his word and therefore that's shirk.

So he can't be utterly transcendent from that.

And so Allah turns out to be capricious. Allah is, and this is from Plantinga, but he describes Allah as utterly transcendent, intrusive, and capricious, okay? That is not the God of the Bible and it's not the God that Calvinists have carefully described in their confessions.

All you gotta go do is just read the sections in the Westminster of the 1689 or whatever and go read, here, this is what Calvinists believe about God and you're gonna find a very different God than Allah.

Allah is utterly transcendent, he is intrusive, and he is capricious.

Muslims have a very fatalistic view of their lives because Allah is so, he is all-powerful and he is all-wise, he is also all-merciful, and he's all of those things, they actually call him most merciful.

What's interesting is that they have no assurance of their salvation at all unless they die in God.

That's why martyrdom is such a big deal, yeah.

It's the only solution to their problem of not knowing whether they're accepted by Allah. They don't know. They have to die in jihad, die defending the house of Islam, and if you do so, here is paradise.

Everybody else is just, well, I'm just gonna keep doing all the stuff that I'm supposed to do, follow my five pillars, pay the taxes, pay homage and charity, acts of charity, and make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in your life, there's a bunch of five pillars.

But even then, they don't know. Also, is the complete opposite of how God describes himself in the Bible.

So where the point of comparison is trying to be made is that it depends upon God's will. Our salvation is utterly dependent upon God's will, not our will, and since it's dependent upon God's will, this sounds to the untrained ear like Allah, who does whatever he wants, and the whole conception is that everything happens just as he wills, whatever that might be.

But it's different with the God of the Bible because he keeps his promises. He swears by his own name, and he is in Trinitarian fellowship in the Godhead, and there is a certainty and a stability with God.

God is not a man that he would change his mind. What does that make Allah? Very manly. After all, he is a projection of Muhammad's mind.

Muhammad's sock puppet.

Yeah, so God is not a man who changes his mind. He does not change his character. He is always true. An interesting side note is the state of scientific investigation by Muslims is so random and so illegitimate, it's humorous because of their conception of Allah.

You've read Chris Bolt's book, didn't you?

But the whole idea of induction, the whole idea that you can do an experiment on this side of the planet, and 200 years later do the same experiment on the other side of the planet, and it still works, and it's still the same thing, that's because of who God is, because he is that kind of God who holds the world in his hands.

Now, unfortunately, our brother Chris is not here tonight, but he wrote to us and posited this, and he talked about the Trinitarian aspect of our salvation, that God the Father has those who he chooses, and he gives those.

He chooses a bride for his son, and then the son dies for the bride, and then the Holy Spirit calls that bride. He referenced, I mean, you can look at just John 3, and you see all three members of the Trinity working.

I mean, you have, even in the very beginning, as Christ says, you can't control the wind, so it is just like the Holy Spirit. You don't know where it's coming, you don't know where it's going to. You can't control this.

God is who he is and does what he wills. So knowing the Trinitarian aspect of salvation, and we can say that God controls everything, but dealing with salvation itself, how do you answer the reply from the, let's say, non-Calvinist says this sounds just like Allah.

Allah does what he wills. You said in the Trinitarian formula, this is God choosing a bride for his son. His son dies for that bride, and the Holy Spirit calls that bride, so there are those that he has chosen.

How is that not arbitrary? How is that not just random?

It's interesting. Our use of the word arbitrary is a little bit different than the actual word by the arbiter. Who is the arbiter is the question here. Arbitrary, yeah, but who's the arbiter? You just go right back to the same question about who the arbiter is.

So it would be in negative light if it were one of us creatures, but if it's the creator who's the arbiter, arbitrary is not a negative thing, is what you're saying.

Yeah, we just use it that way because how often is it tied with capriciousness?

Yeah, and specifically human capriciousness.

Exactly.

So here's something interesting. The Greek word for elect, it's almost a transliteration, but the Greek word is actually eclektos, where we get our word eclectic from. When you walk into someone's home and you see this design, and it's not one thing or the other, but it's from all over, and you see an eclectic design, that's probably because the woman of the home has designed everything according to her taste, and it works and it fits because it is an extension of what she finds beautiful.

It's an extension of her personality in beautifying the home.

That is literally how Amy wanted to do the living room. She said she wanted a room with all kinds of different chairs.

Yeah.

It's like, it didn't make any sense to me, but it works. It works well. People love sitting in that room.

Yes, and so why does God choose, so let's put it this way, the style of heaven is eclectic. This is why we rejoice in the word all as Calvinists. This is why it's a great and wonderful, this is why we rejoice when John the Baptist points at Jesus and says, "'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away "'the sins of the world.'".

Amen and amen. I love that universal language because these are men, women, and children from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation being brought in. In heavens, the stones of the new covenant temple are quarried from the nations.

It's eclectos. The elect are the eclect. So, well, that still seemed arbitrary. It's according to whatever will glorify God, whatever he rejoices in, whatever he finds pleasurable to himself, and by the way, you live in a universe that was created that way too.

Why did God say light would be light? Why did God put the land together the way he did? Why did he do the sea? Why did he make birds in the way that he did? Why did he make fish in the way that he did?

Why did he make all this variety? Why didn't he make certain types of fanciful creatures that we only dream about but he made the ones he made? Because he wanted to, because it brought him glory and he rejoices in it.

Look at the variety of the world in which we live. Do you see the creator? Do you see the creator's beauty? We were at the zoo today. It was wonderful to see all the different animals.