Is God Obligated…?

 

The late R. C. Sproul was the most prominent Reformed theologian of his day, and did much to promote Calvinism in his time. He established the Ligonier Ministries, an “international Christian discipleship organization … distinguished by its teaching of Reformed theology,” according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. On their own website, it identifies its mission as follows:

“Ligonier Ministries exists to proclaim, teach, and defend the holiness of God in all its fullness to as many people as possible. We support the church by providing trustworthy teaching to help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it.”

He was also a prolific writer, and wrote several books, the best known and most popular of which probably is The Holiness of God, which has sold around a ¼ million copies. I haven’t read the book myself; but while I was searching the Internet on another subject, I stumbled across the above quote from the book on the Reformed Reader Blog (link), which I thought was interesting, and worth commenting on. The blog post is titled: “God Is Not Obligated…,” and is dated May 24, 2010. The quote is from chapter 6 of the book, according to the blog post, the full text of which begins as follows:

“Suppose ten people sin and sin equally. Suppose God punishes five of them and is merciful to the other five. Is this injustice? No! In this situation five people get justice and five people get mercy. No one gets injustice. What we tend to assume is this: if God is merciful to five he must be equally merciful to the other five. Why? He is never obligated to be merciful. If he is merciful to nine of the ten, the tenth cannot complain that he is a victim of injustice. God never owes mercy.”

There are several issues with that statement. Firstly, it assumes that God’s mercy is arbitrary. He arbitrarily decides whom to be merciful to, and whom not to be. He doesn’t use an established criteria to decide whom to be merciful to and whom not to be—which criteria we can then also use or apply to qualify for his mercy. That is not biblical. The Bible does indeed teach that God uses a certain criteria to determine whom to be merciful to, and whom not to be:

Proverbs 28:

13 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

Psalm 86:

5 For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.

2 Chronicles 30:

9 … for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.

Joel 2:

13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

Matthew 9:

13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

James 4:

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

2 Peter 3:

9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Ezekiel 18:

23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his [evil] ways, and live?

Ezekiel 33:

11 Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

So God’s extension of his mercy is not arbitrary. He uses a certain criteria to decide whom to be merciful to, and whom not to be—which criteria we can then also apply to qualify for his mercy. That criteria is humility, meekness, turning to God, and above all, repentance. That is what the Bible teaches. Another problem with that statement is, he says that God “… is never obligated to be merciful. … God never owes mercy.” That is not quite correct either. When God lays down a certain criteria for extending his mercy; and someone fulfills that criteria; God is obligated to keep his word, his promise, and extend his mercy. God is obliged to remain true to his word, to his character, to his promise. When he says in Proverbs 28:13 that “… whoso confesseth [his sins] and forsaketh them shall have mercy,” he is obligated to remain true to his word, and fulfill the promise; because one of the attributes of the character of God is that he “cannot lie” (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Heb. 6:18). He is obliged to keep his promise, his word. He cannot violate his own character. Then the quotation continues as follows:

“God is not obliged to treat all men equally. Maybe I’d better say that again. God is never obliged to treat all men equally.”

Which again is unbiblical and false. God is identified in scripture as being “no respecter of persons” (2 Chron. 19:7; Acts 10:34-35; Rom. 2:11; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25; 1 Peter 1:17), and that “… in every nation [and religion] he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:35). What that means is that God does not discriminate. He does not have favorites. He treats all men alike, on an equal basis. He does not arbitrarily decide whom to save, and whom not to save; or whom to forgive, and whom not to forgive; or whom to be merciful to, and whom not to be merciful to, etc. He has laid down a criteria by which to decide those things; and when the criteria is fulfilled, the promised blessings are applied, they cannot fail. God cannot violate his own covenants and promises, because he cannot lie. When the criteria he has laid down are fulfilled by someone, the promised blessings and rewards necessarily follow. The quote then continues as follows:

“If he were ever unjust to us, we would have reason to complain. But simply because he grants mercy to my neighbor, gives me no claim on his mercy.”

Not correct. Everyone has claim on his mercy, when the required conditions are fulfilled, as outlined above. That statement is based on the false premise of his Calvinistic heresy that God’s mercy is applied arbitrarily and unconditionally, which of course is not correct, and has no biblical support. And the quotation finally ends with this statement:

“Again we must remember that mercy is always voluntary. ‘I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy’” (Ex 33:19).

That quote (Ex 33:19) of course is regularly misread, misunderstood, and misapplied in Calvinism. It does not mean that God arbitrarily decides whom to be merciful to, and whom not to be. It means that he is the decision-maker; but it does not mean that he makes those decisions by means of some arbitrary fiat. He has established a criteria by which those decisions are made; and he has told us what those criteria are; and he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining when those criteria have been met. That is what that scripture means. It doesn’t mean what Calvinists like to think it means. So the bottom line is that Calvinism is a heresy. It is as heretical, false, and unbiblical as it can get.

Doug Wilson on the Sovereignty of God

 

After posting my previous two blog messages on Doug Wilson’s explanation of his Reformed or Calvinistic theology, I searched a bit more to see if I could find a more succinct exposition of his theological views, and I found the above video which seems to fit the description. To give a detailed response to all of his arguments would be too tedious to attempt; but luckily it is not necessary to do that in order to refute his entire argument. At around 12:30 minutes into the video he says the following:

“The picture is complicated for us somewhat because we have to keep track of two different kinds of liberty. The first is a creaturely liberty, the freedom to go right or left. Adam had this kind of liberty before the Fall, and he had it after the Fall. You exercise this kind of liberty countless times every day, with every decision you make: left or right, chocolate or vanilla, this playlist or that one. The second kind of liberty, moral liberty, the freedom to do the right thing, is a liberty that we lost in the Fall. We don’t have to reconcile the sovereignty of God with this kind of liberty, because we actually don’t have this kind of liberty. The scriptures describe us as spiritually dead, in Ephesians 2:1-2. We are spiritual slaves, Romans 6:20. We have no liberty in this realm. When God intervenes in our lives to save us, this is not an instance where we have to harmonize his actions with our liberty; his actions are what bring us into a moral liberty that we did not have before. To illustrate the two different kinds of liberty, if an unregenerate man is walking around in a liquor store, deciding how he is going to get drunk that night, he is exercising his creaturely liberty, he is free to choose vodka, or gin or bourbon, or another liquor store. This is the left-right kind of liberty. What he is not free to do is to choose righteousness. Whatever he decides to do apart from Christ, it will be sinful, even if he decides not to get drunk that night. Apart from Christ, his decision will be a self-righteous one. He does not have any moral freedom unless and until Christ saves him [unilaterally and unconditionally]. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty has to be understood at both of these levels, when it comes to creaturely liberty. Part of our ‘Calvinism’ is to insist that God’s sovereignty is fully consistent with our freedom as responsible agents.”

One thing to be borne in mind before discussing this passage, is that what he means by God’s “sovereignty” is the complete predestination and predetermination of all things by God from the beginning, including all the thoughts, feelings, desires, actions, motivations, and inclinations of man (good or bad). He rules out, excludes, any other possible definition for the “sovereignty” of God. But his main argument in the above statement is that it is impossible for an “unregenerate” person to be or do what is good, what is moral, ethical, or right in the sight of God—purely out of a good conscience—which doesn’t agree with scripture or experience. That is sufficient to completely discredit his entire argument. Both scripture as well as experience tells us that that assumption is not correct. First, from scripture:

Romans 2:

6 Who will render to every man according to his deeds:

7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,

9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew [or Christian] first, and also of the Gentile [pagan];

10 But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew [or Christian] first, and also to the Gentile [pagan]:

11 For there is no respect of persons with God.

12 For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law;

13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

14 For when the Gentiles [pagans], which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

According to these words, one does not need to be a believing Christian—a “regenerate” person, according to his theological thinking—to do what is good and right in the sight of God; and be approved, and be saved. The Gentiles, the pagans, who do not have the Law, but who out of a good conscience do what is in the Law—meaning that they do what is good and right in their lives—act as if they already have the Law written in their hearts; and they will be saved. The Bible even provides us with a good example of that, the case of Cornelius: He was not a Christian when he was visited by an angel of God, telling him that his good deeds and righteous acts had been observed and approved by God; and he was favored to receive this angelic visitation. He was a Roman centurion and a pagan at the time:

Acts 10:

1 There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,

2 A devout man [according to his pagan tradition], and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway [according to his pagan tradition].

3 He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.

4 And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.

In response to that Peter was moved to say:

Acts 10:

34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

35 But in every nation [and religion] he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

He was approved of by God for his righteous deeds as a pagan, long before he had become a Christian. “No respecter of persons” means that God does not discriminate, he does not have “favorites”. He treats all men alike, on an equal basis (regardless of their religious affiliations); and applies the same standard of justice, of right and wrong, to all. He condemns the wicked for their wickedness—be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc.; and he blesses the righteous for their righteousness—be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists etc. That completely discredits Doug Wilson’s arguments in that video from start to finish; there is no need to add more. The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) provides us with yet another good example. And according to the teachings of Jesus in Luke 12:47-48, being a believing Christian does not guarantee that one will always do what is right either. The only difference  is that a believer who does what is wrong will receive a greater punishment, than an unbeliever who commits the same wrong! Experience also negates Doug’s theory. There are many non-Christian nations in the world who are, and historically have been very moral and ethical, Japan being a good example. Moral norms of right and wrong exist in all societies and cultures, including non-Christian ones; and the citizens of those cultures generally abide by those norms. All of that discredits Doug Wilson’s Calvinistic theology completely, on a grand scale, with nothing of it remaining.

Does God Decree All Evil—Part II

 

In my previous post I had commented on Doug Wilson’s 15-minute opening statement in the above debate. In this post I will be commenting on his 5-minute rebuttal, which commences at around 41:17 minutes into the video, and begins as follows:

“All right, first let me begin by freely embracing what Kurt said about ‘all’. When I say, ‘Does God decree evil acts?’ I am including absolutely every evil act. I began my journey in this ‘Acts 4’ business, just wondering, ‘Did God decree the crucifixion of Jesus?’ But since then, having come to the Calvinist position, I hold to the Westminster Confession, which says that God ‘freely and unalterably ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.’”

Which is a somewhat ambiguous statement. If it means that God foresees and foreknows what will come to pass, and permits it to come to pass, and could have prevented it from happening if he had wanted to, but chose not to, that would be a true statement. But if it means that God had predestined and predetermined it to happen as it does, including all the future choices, decisions, desires, and inclinations of man (good or bad), thus depriving mankind of moral agency and freewill—which is his theological position—that would not be a true statement. In his theology foreknowledge is possible only through predestination, which is not a logical requirement. He continues:

“So God is not the author of sin; but he most certainly is the author of a story that has sin in it. This is not a defect, this is not a defect in the story; but it is rather the glory of it.”

Which is a meaningless statement. Creation is not a “story,” it is reality, it is a fact. It is made up of real people doing real things—good and bad—and being held accountable for their actions on judgment day. What makes God not the author of sin in creation is the freewill and moral agency of man—which he rejects. He continues:

“So to a few points of rebuttal: if we look at Kurt’s horrific examples that he began his opening statement with—the mistreatment of these prisoners of war, experiments and whatnot; Kurt is saying that God ordained certain evil acts, like the selling of Joseph into slavery in Egypt, or the crucifixion [of Jesus], but not these. The question that I would pose here is, does God know how to decree an [evil] act like that, without violating his holiness? If God decreed these actions—the mistreatment of the prisoners of war—in the same way that he did the crucifixion, or the scriptural examples—does he know how to do that, without violating his holiness?”

(The logical anomaly of referencing the crucifixion of Jesus in this debate was discussed in my previous post.) That is a loaded question. The implication of that statement is that it is possible for God to decree such evil acts, without violating his holiness; the only question is, whether he knows how to do it or not! Doug Wilson has figured out how to do it, the remaining question is whether God has or not! He rules out the option that it may not be possible in fact for God to decree such evil acts, without violating his holiness—which is indeed what the Bible teaches:

Deuteronomy 32:

4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

Leviticus 11:

45 For I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

Leviticus 19:

2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.

Psalm 5:

4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.

Jeremiah 19:

5 They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind:

1 Peter 1:

15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;

16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

James 1:

13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

1 John 1:

5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

That describes the God of the Bible, which doesn’t match the description of the God of Calvinism that he is advocating. He then continues:

“Another question is, when you tell these horror stories about this sort of thing, was God in the room when these experiments were being done? Was God present? If any of these prisoners were crying out, screaming out in pain at the evil that was being done to them, did God hear their prayers? Did God hear their cries? Was God there? Did God have the ability to intervene, and why did he not intervene? And does that refusal to intervene involve a choice on God’s part? So, vile deeds were being committed; was God present when they were being committed?”

The answer to that question was given in my previous post. This (brief) period of mortality is a time of test, a time of trial, to see who will do good and who will do evil—and be rewarded or punished accordingly. Man is free in this life (up to a certain point) to commit evil acts, and hurt others, so he can be held accountable for his actions on judgment day, and receive a just punishment. But firstly, his ability to do evil in this life, and cause harm, is not limitless. If he goes beyond certain limits, God intervenes, and causes destruction, as he did in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah for example, or the Flood. Secondly, this mortal period of test and trial is very short, compared to the rest of eternity. Very soon this period will come to an end; and those who have committed the evil acts will receive a just punishment; and those who have suffered will be fully compensated for their sufferings. After that we have the rest of eternity to look forward to, where the present condition no longer applies. He continues:

“If we limit God’s decrees to God having a purpose or a meaning, you know, for the cross, or for the redemptive help that Joseph would bring by delivering Egypt from famine and so on, if God has meaning for those events; and yet I get mangled in a terrible car accident, and members of my family die and so forth, is there any meaning for me? Is there any meaning in what I am going through? Or is it, those events that God decreed in scripture, they have meaning; but ‘you Wilson are just caught in the machinery’.”

According to scripture, there would be a general meaning, but not necessarily a specific one. One of the purposes of this (brief) mortal experience is for us to learn good and evil—in the widest sense of the term—including experiencing adversity, suffering, hardship, and pain. That is one of the biblical definitions of “evil”. It doesn’t mean that God had specifically planned it for him to have a car accident (assuming he had); but it doesn’t mean that God was ignorant of it either; and could have prevented it from happening if he had wanted to; but chose not to. Another possible scenario is that he had deliberately caused the accident to happen, for whatever nefarious reasons that might have been; and God allowed him to do it for the reasons previously given—because this is one of the purposes of this present (brief) mortal experience. He continues:

“One of the things, one of the hidden writers in this debate—and I would like to finish with this, because it is already evident to me that this is what is going to determine how we read our exchanges—there is a fundamental creator-creature divide; and by that I mean, if we postulated a cosmos, with the great ocean of being, the great sea of being; and God is the whale; and we are the krill, or the minnows; then it makes sense to me why any exercise of sovereignty on God’s part, from within the system, is going to take away my freedom; because if I walk up to a man; if I walked up to Kurt, and pushed him; my exercise of my liberty would take away Kurt’s liberty. To the extent that I am pushing, his liberty is being displaced. It is like billiard ball physics; one ball strikes the other, and it displaces the other. So if God is simply a huge muscle bound Zeus inside the system, inside our created order; and he is just pushing us around; then yes, all of Kurt’s objections would hold. But if God wrote the universe the same way Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, we have got a creator-creature distinction; because how much of this speech was Shakespeare, what percentage of it was Shakespeare, and what percentage of this speech was Hamlet’s? it was 100/100.”

Except that that is an illogical and meaningless comparison, which has no basis in scripture. Firstly, his Calvinistic doctrine of “sovereignty,” which he takes for granted, is not biblical. Secondly, God did not create the world the way Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Neither the analogy of Shakespeare and Hamlet is correct, nor the analogy of the whale and the ocean is correct. God’s creation is not analogous to either of those. The correct biblical theology is as follows:

Firstly, when we speak of freewill, or moral agency, we speak of it operating within our creaturely limitations. I can walk but can’t fly. Birds can fly. Does that mean that birds have more freedom than I do? In a sense I suppose yes, they do! I can also fly in airplanes, which birds can’t! But do they have more freewill, more moral agency than I do? I wouldn’t say so. That is a different thing. I have the freewill, the moral agency, to go and rob my neighbor’s house—regardless of whether I can fly like birds or not. But I can also be put in prison, because I had previously robbed my neighbor’s house, in which case I cannot now go and rob my neighbor’s house again, because my freedom is restricted. So none of his Calvinistic (and non-Calvinistic) analogies are applicable. The correct theology is the one I gave in my previous post, which in more detail can be expressed as follows:

According to the Bible, (1) God has created mankind possessing 100% moral agency, and libertarian freewill. (2) He has created this present (brief) mortal experience as a period of trial, a test, to see who will do good and who will do evil, so they can be judged, and be rewarded or punished accordingly. That necessitates, or makes inevitable, the presence of evil in this (brief) period of mortal existence. (3) God has set aside a day of judgment in which all of mankind (Christian and non-Christian alike) will be judged in righteousness, according to their good or evil deeds in this life, and receive a just reward or punishment. (4) The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes it possible for those who have committed evil acts in this life to repent of them, and be forgiven, so they won’t be held accountable for them on judgment day. There is no “imputation,” and “faith alone” is a heresy. There is justification and sanctification through faith, repentance, baptism, and gift of the Holy Ghost; wherein they are washed and cleansed from all sin; becoming pure, holy, and righteous before God. (5) Repentance and keeping God’s commandments is not the same as “works,” or “works salvation”. Those are two different things. There is no salvation without genuine repentance; and to “repent” means to turn away from sin. It means to stop breaking God’s commandments, and start keeping them. And repentance is a volitional act; it is something that we choose to do or not to do. It is not something that just “happens” to people whether they like it or not just because they have “believed” (as in Calvinism). (6) This period of mortality, of test and trial, is very short, compared to the rest of eternity; and cannot be compared to it in the eternal scheme of things. (7) Foreknowledge is an extension of God’s omniscience. It does not necessitate predestination. There is no predestination of mankind to salvation or damnation from creation; nor of man’s choices, decisions, desires, motivations, and actions in this life (as in Calvinism). Mankind are 100% free to make such choices and decisions in this life, so that the judgments that God will bring upon them on judgment day will be just. (8) Calvinism is false, it is a heresy. It is a demonic and Satanic perversion of the gospel which has no biblical support.