Is Calvinism a Cult?

Was Andrew the one that helped you get the podcast back up?

Yeah, he did get the podcast, he didn't help me, he did it.

Don't you think you owe him a dinner for that? Oh, no, he didn't.

Got him! Welcome to Apologetics Live. We're here to answer your questions and challenges about God and the Bible. Meet your hosts from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport, Dr. Anthony Silvestro and Pastor Justin Pierce.

Calvinism, Cult Definitions, and the Debate Setup

Apologetics Live here every Thursday night. There's Pastor Justin. You know, hello, Pastor Justin. Guess what? What's that? We got someone right over there. We got a special guest. There he is. There's a Stockwell in the house.

That's the Mike Stockwell. That is. You know what that means when there's a Stockwell in the house? No sushi. Well, I was going to say no food, but yeah. Oh, yes. Well, welcome to Apologetics Live Thursday night.

We played that intro because we should have, should have Mr. Matt Slick coming in. He wants to join us. But actually, I did see just before we went live that he's still doing the after show for his radio show.

Seems like he may have a sinless perfectionist that he's talking with. And so that's gone for a while. We'll have to check in later with him and see when he comes in. So tonight we're going to deal with a topic that comes from, well, this really does stem from the debate from two weeks ago.

You had something you wanted to read, I think, that we got recently. Oh, you got to give me a minute. I got to pull it up. So while you're pulling that up, so what we're going to deal with is after we did the debate on Calvinism, Calvinism was Calvinism useless, or Calvinism is useless and dangerous was the topic of that debate.

Well, we got some interesting reactions, and I will say this. This is what happens when people debate. You have one of two choices when when someone exposes what you're what you're saying. And they expose it as wrong.

You have one of two choices. You can repent and say, ah, I was in error. Let me correct that. Or you could do as Mr. Fuentes has done, which is to double down. And that's what he did. So instead of a victim, yeah, I'm a victim.

He was doing that. He played victim status. But now he's gone. It's not just that he thinks Calvinism is useless and dangerous. He now says it's a cult, and there's been a bunch of people that have been claiming that as well.

Why don't you read the the.

Hang on, I'm kicking somebody out of the chat.

OK, who are you kicking out of chat and why? That's fun.

I don't I came small, small union. I haven't. OK, yeah. He's gone. All right. Well, yeah. Anyway, I actually got it pulled up. I can pull it up here in the share screen if you want. Let's see. There we go.

And here we go. So, David, David, John. How would you say that? Ben Trez says Calvinist are anti Bible. Their mind can read words that are not there and fail to read words that are there. Any in quotes or in parentheses, he says.

And apparently they do not know how to read. I'm sorry, let me try that again. See, I didn't know how to read. And apparently they do know how to read. Can't properly even read English much more than underlying original languages.

That means they twist the Bible to fit their theology. I guess that's I guess you can't. Yeah, I can't read that.

So and then and then we have we have things like this that pop up and we got this one as well. Here's the definition of Calvinism, the gospel according to Calvinism. This is there. This is in quotes, quote, For God so loved the elect that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever was unconditionally elected before the foundation of the world should not perish but have everlasting life.

For God sent his son into the world to condemn the world that the elect through him might be saved. That's John Calvin 3, 16 and 17.

Well, at least he did more than one verse. But there's another famous theologian that says twist not scripture unless you be like what? Satan.

Yeah. Yeah. So with that, why don't we bring in the slick one? There he is. About time. I wasn't sure you were going to get in here because I was watching a discussion on your after show with a it seems like a sinless perfectionist who would look like you actually had her because because you got her to the point where you asked her if she had ever sinned after willfully.

She was like, well, yes. And you're like, OK, then by your theology, you're you're you're damned.

And then she started to differentiate between different kinds of sins that doesn't apply to her. Yeah. Oh, it wasn't willful. It wasn't a willful sin. And then and then it went to Roman seven where she brought a Roman seven, 18 to twenty five or Paulson.

Well, you know, you struggle. She brought it up. I went to it and I said, does he sin willfully? Yes. Is it a deliberate sin because he's doing it by his own will? She goes, yes. Well, then you're saying he can't be saved.

There's no longer. Right. You know what she did? I said, why don't you answer that? She turned her head down to camera and started doing something else. Wouldn't listen. I go, you're out of here. Yeah.

So, you know what?

She's just unteachable. She was obstreperous. That's almost like my debater from two weeks ago. Really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you had the same thing going on with your Calvinism stuff, too.

He actually kept asking Justin, will you please close in prayer? Please close in prayer. Please close in prayer. And so just before we close in prayer, I'm trying to correct him and explain why, you know, like if you're going to debate, you need to know the topic of your debate.

And he pulls his earbuds out. And so someone snapped a picture. Pastor Justin and I both have our heads down because Justin's praying and this guy's just looking at the screen. Yeah. And as soon as Justin says, amen, we open our eyes, he puts his earbuds back in and starts talking.

Yeah. It was pretty funny in a sad kind of way. So so. Obstreperous twits. Yeah. So what we're going to do tonight is talk about Calvinism. And I know Pastor Justin wanted you to come in, Matt, because you've been kind of dealing with a guy recently on the show that was hounding you about this.

And we just figured it'd be fun. So let me start off with some definitions of terms. And I will give now Matt has a different definition of a cult on karm .org than I do in my book. What do we believe?

So mine's the shorter list. So I will go through mine while Matt looks up his because his has like 19 points.

He's got 164 points on it.

And what you're going to find is that all his points, I think, fit into into mine. And actually, I got to look. I do have. Hold on. I do have a new a new definition. So so I heard I heard this for a definition for cult, Matt.

This was new. This was from a secularist, someone that was in, you know, they call it bite control. So a cult by this was defined by bite control. BITE stands for behavior, information, thought and emotion.

So it's behavior control, information control, thought control or emotion control. So what they're saying is that basically and this does fit that a cult is basically all about control. And that's the real goal of it is control.

And whether they're trying to control your behavior, the information you have, your thoughts, your emotions. And I actually thought that that was a pretty good way of summarizing it. It, you know, one thing as far as the definition that I have in my book, what do we believe?

There's five elements to a cult. First is authoritarianism and authoritarianism is that you have a person or organization that sets themselves up as they are the the ones that have the authority to interpret scripture.

So no one else but them. They are the authority. If you're not hearing it from them, you don't have the truth. Second is scripture twisting, which usually happens when you get that authority wanting to make the Bible say it doesn't say they twist the scriptures.

They can't read it in context, things like that. The third one is going to be isolationism. And so what they do is they try to isolate you from these from any other group, any other way of getting information.

And the way they'll usually do that is by exclusivism. Exclusivism is that they claim they alone have the truth. So if you go outside that group, you don't have the truth. And that's why they can isolate you.

So you're only hearing the same thing from it's basically get you into an echo chamber. So you hear nothing but what they're saying, kind of like Democrats in the media, right? They don't hear anything, but what they want to say.

So they isolate everyone by getting big tech to shut it off. The fifth is harm. Now harm could be in several ways. It could be a physical harm. It could be a sexual harm, could also be a spiritual harm.

There's some form of harm, whether it's emotional. In a lot of these groups, because of the exclusivity that they claim, what ends up happening is that they end up feeling like they can't leave the group.

And if anyone tries to leave the group, they feel like they've lost something because a lot of these groups will do love bombing that keeps them in there. And so what you end up with is you end up having people who typically within cults, one of the other characteristics of a cult, but not definition would be a lack of integrity with language.

They use words, this is sort of with the twisting of scripture, but they use words and give it meanings that it doesn't really have. So those would be my definition of a cult. And real quick, before I go to Matt, Humble Clay is asking if I've been in touch with Sam Stramone for a debate.

Humble Clay, if it was you who contacted me about debating Sam Stramone on his view of Mary, I responded and said, I don't know what his view is. So I don't really have a reason to get in touch with him to debate him until I know what the issue is.

So Matt, what's your definition there, Karm, for a cult?

Cult is whatever, when you have a group that is like striving for eternity, where you're trying to earn your salvation, then that would be cultic.

That's one definition. So Matt doesn't believe in sanctification. Oh, I believe in sanctification.

I just don't want to strive to gain eternity.

Just do me a favor, read, just help me out. Can you?

Okay, let's get serious. A cult is a group that exercises control over people and has aberrant theology to the point where they can't be saved. And that's the basic definition. If you have secular groups as well, that could be cultic.

You can have atheistic groups that can be cultic and cult theological perspectives. I believe that atheism is a theology and that's another topic and all secular movements are. But generally, generally speaking, cults restrict your access to others, other information, family members.

They try and control where you are, what you can do. And Christian based cults will use scripture, but they will twist scripture like someone I just talked to a half hour ago and bring a false understanding of something and then demand adherence to that false thing.

And if you don't, you have temporal and or eternal punishment. Those are the kinds of things that deal with the cults. Yeah.

How to Witness to a Universalist

Okay. Okay. Now we did, before we get into Calvinism as a cult, I do have here a question that we got asked and so, and Matt, this might be something that you would also like to weigh in on, but this is basically what the person said, sent me a message.

They had sent me an email through the ministry and then contact me on Facebook for clarification. So Kevin asked this, I was the one that suggested about witnessing to a universalist, which only believes 80 of the scripture is God, sorry, 80 of scripture is God inspired because I get up early in the morning, I don't have time to go to the show live.

So he's wanting us to answer the question. His question was basically, how do you witness to a universalist? He's, he's been trying to deal with this with, I think it was a relative or a friend, sorry, friend says here.

So I guess the problem with the universalist and I'm going to, I'll let Matt chime in after or Pastor Justin, or even we have, we have a guest here. Mike Stockwell is here with us, Matt. I don't know if you know Mike, but he's here.

You don't see him unless I switched the camera angle. I'll switch it there. There's Mike.

Fear God. What does it say? The shirt says nothing else. Fear God and nothing else. Oh, he wants that. That's a good verse. I'm coveting that shirt.

I think the issue with a universalist and for folks who may not know what a universalist, it's the idea that everyone goes to heaven. There's, there's the fact that they want to believe that God and the way they'll usually word this, Kevin is you'll hear people say, well, my God wouldn't send anyone to hell.

And my response to that usually is that's right. Your God can't send anybody to hell because your God doesn't exist. And, and the reality is when, when they're doing that, all you have to do in dealing with a person like that is just ask one question.

Where do you get your information? Because they're not getting it from the Bible. As you said in your message, this person's only believing 80 of the, the Bible is inspired by God. They're not believing the Bible.

And so if they're not believing the Bible, that's not where they're getting their information. And so if they're rejecting part of the Bible saying, well, that's not really inspired, they've set themselves up as the standard of determining and judging what is and what is not God's word.

Therefore they are the standard. And so what you could do before you get into that is ask them whether they believe that what Jeremiah said, that the heart is deceitfully wicked. Is that inspired by God?

Do they believe that? Do that upfront by doing that upfront. Then when you get to the point of revealing to them that they're setting themselves up as judge, you go back to that verse and say, how do you know that your heart didn't deceive you?

And now they're kind of stuck because they already said that that's God's word and they've set themselves up as the judge. So that's one way of dealing with a universalist. Matt, Justin, you guys have, or Mike, do you have other ways?

They would deny hell too, right? They deny hell altogether.

Yeah. Some do. Some will say that people will go to hell and suffer for a while, then be saved. But universalism says that ultimately all people will be saved. There's some universalists who say that the demonic realm will be saved as well.

But the problem is in Mark 3 .29, and I do this to give you what the response is to explain what they do. And with Mark 3 .29, whoever sins against the Holy Spirit has committed an eternal sin. Well, hey, you know, Mr. Uni, it's an eternal sin, so therefore it can't be forgiven.

Oh, Matt, but you don't understand. The word eternal there is aionios, and it only means an age. So it's just that age that it's unforgivable in. So when I go to Matthew 12 .32, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven in this age or the age to come, a two-age model, then they'll say, no, see, but it's the age after that that they can be forgiven.

So it doesn't matter what you say, that's what they do. So they submit the scriptures to this one phrase ideology, aionios, which is age, aionios ton aionion, age of the ages, which is how it's translated into the English eternal, without end.

But the problem is that there are verses that in Revelation, which shows that God is eternal, where it speaks about him forever, that there's certain things like he has dominion forever, forever and ever, and it's aionios ton aionion.

And so I'll say, wait a minute, why is it that God's dominion is forever without end? And yet you say that punishment is temporary when it's the same phraseology that's used, and this exposes their prejudice when they come to the scriptures at this point.

That's one of the major things. Okay. Make sense?

Yep. Was I too slick and quick? No, you're fine. Okay, Justin, did you want to answer that at all? Got one?

All right. Another one you can think about is when you're talking to an atheist, I almost said atheist, sorry. When you're talking to a universalist, it's close. Well, when you're talking to a universalist, you might want to consider asking them if they believe that there are judgments that are right.

If there are principles of judgment here on earth that are right, would it be right for God to judge a child rapist? Would it be right for God to judge a serial murderer? Or you can go down the list of the most heinous of crimes and ask, is it right for God to judge that one?

And a lot of people will concede that it's right for the worst of the worst, but they're not the worst of the worst, and they don't know the worst of the worst. So then you have to kind of break it down by asking something along the lines of, well, if it's okay for God, who is righteous and holy, to judge what is wicked, then why is it that you're trying to set the standard above God?

Because God himself has made the standard, and he's explained what he will judge according to his scripture. He's explained what he's going to do, and for us to try to stand over God as the judge over God of what he can judge, that's pretty close to sin itself.

So you might want to be careful of that. All right.

Predestination, Election, and Foreknowledge

So let's see, we have a guest in the background. I'll bring him in, equipping the saints. Hello. What's your name? Rob Barnhart. You know me, Andrew. Sorry, I didn't see you. How are you doing, Rob? Oh, so you had some good questions that would be fun for Matt to answer as well.

Yeah, yeah. I'm kind of excited to hear.

It's a scholarly topic, no less. So I'm trying to think through predestination for Calvinism, and whether or not the eternal decree is linked with predestination, election, and things like this, or if they're seen as separate.

You know what I mean? Like they're each in their own doctrines, or if you guys see them as a whole. They're related.

Yeah. Well, God's predestination is of the elect. So God elects. He chooses. Ephesians 1, 4. He chose us. He, the Father, chose us, choosing the elect, in him, Christ, before the foundation of the world that would be holy and blameless.

So the election is there. And when you look at this verse, you'll notice that the election is a choosing which necessitates that God, who is all-knowing from eternity, will elect the group of people for salvation that he will give to the Son.

And a lot of people say that he looks in the future to see what's going to happen. That's another topic. But when you go to Ephesians 1, 4 and 5, he chose us. He chose us. The word there is eclegami. He chose us.

God did the choosing upon us before the foundation of the world, before anybody would do anything good or bad, that we would be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us. We'll get to the decree in a sec.

In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons of Jesus Christ himself. So election and predestination are definitely related, that God elects and predestines the elect. Now, you asked about the decree, right?

Yes, sir. All right. So, believe it or not, I actually was working on my notes on that very thing. Let me get to it on the decrees of God. And I need to go through and do some more research on it. But I was doing some stuff.

And here we go. Come on, where is it? I thought it was right there. Because there are things that people don't understand what decree means. And decree is an expression of God's will for direct and indirect effect.

So he can directly decree something, let there be light, boom. But he can indirectly decree when he lets people sin. But nothing can occur without the decree of God in that sense. It's the eternal plans of God, whereby before the creation of the world, he determined to bring about everything that happens.

Now, I can expand on that if you want. I can. But this is what the basics of decree is. And there are verses that talk about this. And I can go through them. I don't want to take too long. I don't want to get too far away from your exact question.

And I think what I'll do at this point is just go ahead. Do you see the I'm sorry. Go ahead. Do you see the future sight I forget what it is. The fore not predestination, but foreknowledge. Is the foreknowledge something connected with from a Calvinist viewpoint, something connected with the eternal decree?

Yes. But you've got to understand what foreknowledge is. Because if you go to Romans 8 .29

I'll save you the time. Assume that I know because you taught me.

Then you know that foreknowledge does not necessitate looking into the future to see what will happen, right? Yeah. And that Romans 8 .29, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. They're the same group.

Yeah, yeah. Right? Just not to insult you back. Feel free to do that because you're teaching other people. But always assume that I'm pretty familiar with these topics. I'm pretty well read. All right.

Okay. So I'm trying to figure out how Calvinists see the eternal decree, the relationship to foreknowledge, and the relationship from there, from the predestination and election. So you said that election and predestination are connected.

Would you say that they are I agree. Would you say foreknowledge and predestination are similarly linked?

Okay. I'm writing down you want to know the relation of decree, election, predestination. What else?

I'm sorry. Right now the standing question is do you see foreknowledge as the same thing as predestination? No. Or is it something separate?

It's separate because one thing, prognosco, predestination, I mean foreknowledge or to foreknow, and proerizo, predestine, they're different. And how they're used in scripture. And for those who don't know, God only knows believers.

Get away from me, I never knew you, Matthew 7, 23. That's the word prognosco. When we see God speaking about knowing people, it means it's a salvation relationship. So he says, Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them.

All right. And so I give eternal life to them. And we have to be known by God, Galatians 4, 8. So that's what this means about knowing, gnosco. Foreknowledge is prognosco. It just has the word fore in front of it, prognosco.

And foreknowledge, by the foreknowledge of God, does it mean that God then, this is for people who don't know this topic, does it mean that God looks into the future, so to speak, and decides or and learns what's going to happen?

That's one view and it's heretical. Does God know what free will creatures will do in different situations in a foreknowledge sense from the eternal presence of God before the foundation of the world?

And so in the foreknowledge, God just knows what people are going to do in their freedom. And it's libertarian free will, which is problematic for different reasons. But nevertheless, does God know that?

Some people say, well, that's what God knows, what people will do. And so in that, there's a relationship between that and predestination. So there's a relation. So what some are saying is that God knows, not look into the future, but he knows what the future will maintain and what will happen in the future and those who will be saved.

And so then he predestines those. The problem here is that it implies the idea that God's choice is based on a good condition in the person, that under that condition, in that situation, God will save that person.

That God's foreknowledge is that in a particular situation, that person will choose God. That's a problem because it shows partiality. It means that what is happening is that God is saving somebody based on the foreknowledge information that he has, that they will choose him.

That is a violation of scripture, Romans 2 .11, and also James 2, 2 -4, that negates that we get into that. So that's one of the errors that people say about foreknowledge. Rather, it makes more sense from the reform perspective to say that foreknowledge is God's knowing the predestined simultaneously.

There's not a temporal condition. He knows this, then because of that, he bases his actions on that. That's more of a hint of a temporal priority. Nope. In reformed theology, all of God's knowledge is eternal and he doesn't grow in his knowledge.

There's an infinite number of potentialities that could exist and one actuality that he brought into existence. All knowledge about all potentialities are within his realm because they could only exist if he were to give them existence.

So whatever actuality he brought into existence, logically and necessarily, he works all things in that actuality after the counsel of his own will, Ephesians 1 -11. The foreknowledge is not that he will look to see what will happen or what conditions a person will do something and then choose them.

That would be wrong. So foreknowledge really is not about knowing ahead of time in that sense, but him knowing in a saving way the same group of people, the ones who are the predestined ones. Because he's going to predestine them in Christ, from a federal headship, Ephesians 1 -4.

And that foreknowledge is his saving relationship with them, okay, saving relationship, foreknowledge, saving relationship, with the ones he also is predestining, they're the same group. So he knows the ones he's going to save and then works the salvation out in real time through predestination.

Well, I certainly appreciate you go through that. Exactly, if you could take a moment, I think I want to let you hit this nail a little harder. In the view of faith, you said Romans 2 and another passage, I didn't quite catch it.

Why in your opinion does that kind of serve as a problem for that view?

Because, what's your name, first name? Rob. Rob. Bob or Rob? Rob. Okay, Rob. Let me ask you a question. Is there any good thing in you besides Jesus? Before you're saved, is there any good thing in you?

No. No. So let's just say that I come into an assembly and I'm rich. Oh man, everybody knows that guy's so rich. Hey, sit here at the head of the table. I'm famous, sit here at the head of the table, right?

That's showing prejudice based on a quality I possess. But you see, in a human perspective, that's sin. That's James 2, 2 through 4. Someone comes in in fine clothing, they have this, they have that, sit at the head of the table.

Are you not judging? And so that's condemned by God. He doesn't look at any quality that we have. So Rob, you and I are in the same boat. We're sinners by nature, completely and totally. So what have we got?

Nothing. Nothing. So he is not going to condition his election based on anything in us.

Can I ask you a follow-up question real quick? Sure. What if they pointed to our having God's image as something good?

Genesis 126, I was just writing actually on that today, the image of God, the communicable attributes and the incommunicable. We are made in God's image in the sense that God has the attributes that we can participate in.

He loves, we can love. He hates, we can hate. He thinks, we can think. That's what it means to be made in God's image. And there's more to it, but that's an oversimplification. So we're made in God's image, but sin has affected the image, the imagio de.

Would you say obscured? I don't know.

I don't know what the right verb is. I just say affected. Well, I just know that from reading Genesis, I find it interesting that when Adam has his second kid, it says he's made in Adam's image. Yeah.

And that's fine. There seems to be something different going on. That's fine.

It's just that the descendancy, that's all that's going on there. But there was no descendancy with Adam. It was a direct creation. And we could say in a very loose sense, his descendant is God, you know, antecedent is God, but not in a biological sense, obviously.

So would you agree with the following statement? For knowledge of God is nothing else than God knows all things before they happen.

No. Because God knows all things before they happen because he's decreed that that's what will happen. You got to think. If you have a sphere, it's an infinite number of little lines that come out from the center, different directions.

This is God's knowledge about all potential existences, right? Yeah. He picks one. If he picks one, he knows everything that's going to happen in there. Now, let's just say people have free will, and they do.

But what does it mean biblically? Does it mean that God won't know which color shirt they're going to wear today or tomorrow? Because if he knows and they can't, he can't be free ahead of time. That's not what it means.

People don't understand what that is. So in order for the statement to be correct, it would have to involve God's decree.

Nothing can occur unless God has willed it to occur. Period.

So you'd have to say something like that first. And then you can say that statement right there for the foreknowledge of God is nothing else than God knows all things before they happen.

Foreknowledge is not causatory, and it's not reactionary. It's simultaneous with the infinite knowledge of God. The foreknowledge, I believe, is the issue of relationship that God has with the saved, with the elect.

Okay. Because it says those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. They're the same group. Romans 8 .29.

That's why I say that. Okay. So you see foreknowledge directly connected to the elect. And so you can't just say yes to that statement. Okay.

In that sense, that's how God uses it in Romans 8 .29. Those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. They're the predestined. They're the same group.

Right? Okay. So Matt, you got a question that came up here. Sure. Josiah.

Does God decree abortion? Yes. Now let's talk about what it means to decree. Now let me ask the person, does God work all things after the counsel of his will? The Bible says, Ephesians 1 .11. Also, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will.

So does a person's abortion, is it worked after the counsel of God's will? The answer has to be yes. The death of my son. Yes. My wife's Louise Dietz and her open heart surgery. Yes. The fact that I just found out last week I'm diabetic.

Boy. Okay. All this after the decrees of God or the will of God? Of course. If anyone denies that, you're denying scripture. So people make a mistake in thinking that if God decrees it, he's causing it.

So I have to step sideways here and introduce a concept dealing with causation. The reason I'm going to do this is because this topic and this kind of topic has come up before and theologians through the centuries have discussed this and they've raised certain issues and they've come up with certain things to think about.

It's not I'm making it up. It's not someone trying to get out of a difficult thing. This is actual rational discussion about the revelation of God. We know that God works all things after the counsel of his will.

We know that God knew Adam would sin. It's not a surprise to God. So what we have in levels of causation, we have what's called the ultimate, then the proximate, then the efficient. The ultimate cause of Adam sinning is God.

The ultimate cause is God. When we say ultimate cause, we're not saying that God makes him do it. What we're saying is that God created the universe and the earth and the garden and put him in that garden.

All right? So he's the ultimate cause that God brought the broad scope of things into being. The proximate, like approximates right next to it, the proximate causation would be God allows Adam and Eve in the garden and he allows Satan to come in to deceive.

And he knows this, right? He knows this. He knows that Satan through the snake will come in and deceive Eve. God knows this. He knows all things present. Even the open theist would admit to that. He knows the condition of the evil one in the heart and the fall.

He knows this. God's not going, what's going to happen? I hope this, what's going to happen? That's not it. So he's the proximate cause in that he allowed the circumstances to exist in which the fall could occur.

So Eve sinned first. She gave the fruit to Adam. We'll talk about Adam. And then he sinned. Did God cause Adam to sin? No. Did he bring about the circumstances in which Adam could freely sin? Yes. So Adam is what's called the efficient cause of his own sin.

But God is what we would call the ultimate and in this case proximate. That your circumstances are arranged so that a sin could occur, but God's not forcing anybody to do it. So when Adam sinned, he freely chose to sin.

No one forced him and he rebelled against God. He therefore is his own cause of his sin. And we call this the efficient cause. So God decrees everything. And when we say decree, we mean that there's stuff that God does ultimately in all things and he does it directly and indirectly.

So he directly decreed that the universe exists, the garden is there, and he indirectly decreed to his permission because it can't occur unless God permits it. And if he permits it, it's his will. And it occurs in the garden.

So it's what we call his indirect decree that it occurred. But as far as causation, the free will person in this sense is the efficient cause of his own sin.