A Refutation of Divine Determinism

The doctrine of divine exhaustive determinism is the belief that every single molecule in the universe is determined by God to do what it does and to be where it is. It is God’s sovereign directing and ordering of the universe. No one and no thing can do otherwise than what God has decreed from eternity past. It is a belief that was held by John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, John Piper, and Justin Peters. John Piper and Justin Peters even go so far as to say that all evil in the world is ordained by God like the holocaust or the rape of a young girl. Most Calvinists who are probably also compatibilists would say that they believe God is sovereign over all things and that mankind is also free. Though how they define sovereignty and free-will would render these two things a logical contradiction. But, they admit that our finite minds cannot understand these things but it is true nonetheless and it is perfectly resolved in the infinite mind of God. This is the nature of the compatibilist belief but I would argue that it is not at all compatible. I also do not see how God could get off the hook and be vindicated as blameless if He was the one who ordered these evils to take place and that they could not have happened otherwise. The Calvinists also say that the reason behind God doing every single thing is for His glory and good pleasure. The combination of these two doctrines is atrocious. It would mean that the holocaust and sexual abuse of little girls happened for the glory and pleasure of God. That is, it’s ultimately what He wanted to happen and bring about such suffering so that somehow He would receive glory and praise in the end; and it is only through people’s sin that there can be redemption and salvation and so these evils are really just necessary evils so that God can receive the glory for His grace and mercy in some other sphere. I reject such thinking and find it reprehensible. It would make God an accomplice in evil, the arsonist and the firefighter. But that is not the case. I believe that people have free-will to legitimately choose between A or not A. Of course, there is no absolute autonomy. All creatures have influencing factors for making decisions. Some of these factors are internal like pain, pleasure, goals, and rewards. Others are external like the actions and emotions of other people around us or natural disasters and changes in the weather. All of these things influence our decision-making because of this world that we live in. Only God is absolutely free to do as He pleases without influences affecting His weakness since He has no weakness.

I do acknowledge that the Calvinists hold to a sort of free-will. But their idea of free-will is in connection with the doctrine of Total Depravity which essentially means that all men are free to choose whatever they want but the problem is that they never want no ever will want God in their own nature. So, they are bound by their own nature to only choose evil until God regenerates them by His sovereignty. This means that all people are essentially doomed from the womb, having no actual possible chance to be saved and receive eternal life unless they won God’s lottery system and were predestined to be one of the elect. But here, we must digress. That is too deep of a subject to get into right now. What I would like to do instead is to focus our attention on God’s sovereignty regarding trivial matters, then we shall move on to moral matters and in some article maybe I will write on what predestination and election really are.

The moment we say that God causes people to make choices in all situations and that they never could have made another choice, renders free-will to be nothing but nonsense. It’s pseudo free-will—only the illusion of choice. It makes no sense to use the word anymore if that’s the case. Life would be simply no more than a grand charade, a script to follow, a play to act. As John Lennox says:

Causal determinism, whether genetic or otherwise, overreaches itself. It not only destroys morality, it destroys all meaning. […] God is not the irresistible cause of human behavior, whether good or bad—otherwise our actions and characters would be deprived of moral significance and it would make no sense to talk of us doing or being “good” or “bad.” […] What Helm and Sproul seem not to appreciate is that, if God takes over and “directly controls” the molecules in my arm—for instance, as it swings to hit you—then my responsibility has gone and I cease to be fully human.
(Determined to Believe?, 25, 53, 55)

If we think about this for a moment, for what reason would God need to determine our mundane decisions? What does God have against me wearing a blue shirt vs. a red shirt that He would so cause me to wear one and not the other? And what implications would wearing a different colored shirt have in the grand scheme of things? Sure, one could argue that Joseph wore a multi-colored robe and that led to his brothers betraying him which led to slavery and then his rulership over Egypt so that he could save everyone from famine. But that is probably more the exception, not the rule, don’t you think? Even so, God could have chosen another way to fulfill His purpose of saving Egypt from famine. He didn’t need to use a multi-colored robe to do it. That just happened to be the thing that led to another thing. But for most circumstances, how are the clothes we choose to put on every day something that God would need to determine? Couldn’t He simply determine instead that we would be free to choose what to wear? He certainly could. I believe there are many mundane decisions we make everyday that have no bearing on the course of significant future events like what we wear, what we eat, where we live, what job we decide to work at. Of course, now would be a good time to ask: what is a significant future event? It’s possible that some of these could be: someone’s salvation, the fulfillment of prophecy, an answer to prayer, and God’s ultimate victory over the devil.

I believe that there are certain future events that God in His sovereignty determines to be so and has a good purpose and reasons for making those events happen through the influences of the world, while also using the free-will of people to get it done. I don’t believe all things are determined. Why do they need to be? Why should I choose chocolate ice-cream over mint chocolate-chip? Or mint chocolate-chip over chocolate? How is this amoral choice of any consequence to God? I cannot at all see how my freedom would somehow make God less sovereign. We just need to have the right definition of sovereignty. I don’t believe in a meticulous sovereignty of God, for that would make Him a puppeteer or we, his robots. Saying that God is less controlling does not mean that He is less in control. It does not make Him a little “g” god. How much more skill, wisdom, and knowledge do you think is needed for a grand master chess player to beat his opponents every time without controlling both sides of the chess board? Significantly more. And I do not see how this idea of God not controlling every aspect in life would make Him less sovereign. Is a king less sovereign because he doesn’t enforce a curfew at 6pm for all of his subjects? Is he less sovereign because he has given his subjects freedom to play sports and buy the cars they wish to buy and the color they wish to choose? Certainly not! He is still king. He is still on the throne and in charge and no one questions that. Rather than this being a put-down on the king, it is instead an exaltation that he has given his subjects liberty to do as they please while yet still within the confines of the rule of law. They are at liberty to pursue their own happiness and the king is pleased that they are able to do so. I would agree with A.W. Tozer when he said:

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, “What doest thou?” Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so. (The Knowledge of the Holy, chapter 22)

It is an absolute nightmare to try and defend divine exhaustive determinism because it strips life, morality, and thought of all meaning. John Lennox says it this way:

The point is that causal determinism cannot even be meaningfully affirmed, since if it were true then the affirmation itself would be determined, and so would not be a belief freely formed on the basis of weighing the evidence for and against. The affirmation is therefore irrational. Furthermore, it is common for determinists to try to convince non-determinists to convert to determinism. But that assumes that the non-determinists are free to convert, and therefore their non-determinism is not determined in the first place. The cost of holding human free will to be an illusion would appear to be impossibly high, as it entails the invalidity not only of human morality but also of human rationality. (49)

For those who have a rational mind, God has given it to you because he intended that you should use it, not ignore these rational statements and sweep them under the rug. To add to what John Lennox has said, it would seem quite infeasible for us to empirically experience making choices by weighing the evidence and making choices through feelings yet for all that to merely be an illusion. Why would God need to even create such a realistic illusion if every decision is just part of the program? Why the charade? Seems kind of deceptive and unnecessary to me.

I was a Calvinist for fifteen years and most of that time I was a compatibilist. I used to believe this stuff but ignored the contradictions. Part of it was that I had not previously heard any good biblical arguments against Calvinism and the other part of it was that in my subconscious, I was afraid of questioning what was labeled as “the truth,” especially since all the big-wig preachers were teaching it. But thankfully, I was led out of those doctrines in much thanks to Leighton Flowers. He showed me common sense arguments for Provisionism that I was able to clearly understand without sacrificing a “big God” type theology. So, there is no need to be afraid to question theology. I myself have found a firm place to stand outside of Calvinism and I believe you can too. I am also now free from the cognitive dissonance that I suffered from for so long, which I previously had to suppress. Though I say all these things, Calvinists are still my friends, not my enemies. However, I will nonetheless come against the doctrines because of the harm I see in them.

What about moral choices? Are they determined by God? As we have seen so far, it would be quite difficult to maintain the notion because that would make God culpable of moral evil, an accomplice in crime. But God says that He cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13) and that with temptation He always provides a way of escape (1 Cor 10:13). There are also people who continually resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51). These things strongly imply that it is up to our own free-will to choose good or evil and God is not stopping us.

But let us say for the sake of argument that God determined only the good actions of people but not the evil actions, could that work? Well, at first sight, God would be off the hook but if we continue to think deeper, God would still bear responsibility. Let’s say for some reason that God wanted you to sin but if He were to directly make the molecules in your body make the sin happen, then God would be responsible. But what if He took away His spiritual sustaining grace and leave you to yourself? I suppose He could do such a thing but then this idea has grave problems considering the goodness of God. How could God really be good if He is enabling you to sin by turning His face away? The Bible says that the will of God is for our sanctification, not for our sin (1 Thess 4:3). God would certainly not work against us. It would go against His nature which is to not withhold anything back from us since He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all (Ro 8:31-32).

But what about for unbelievers? Would God do that? We certainly have the Romans 1 passage that talks about God giving people over to their sin. Some in the Reformed circle would call this the wrath of God’s abandonment but I would disagree with the term. I prefer the term consequential wrath because God doesn’t give up on anyone until hell or until they have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. God always wants people to come to him and even if they don’t, He wants them to do good to others. What’s happening in Romans 1 is that God is saying, “I’m not going to try and stop you if you choose this sin. I’m not going to put any roadblocks in your way or anything like that. I won’t influence people or the world to stop you. If that’s the life you want, the devil can have you and you can experience the depravity of such sin so that perhaps you might one day see the harm you have brought to yourself and the error of your ways so that you might turn to Me.” This consequential wrath means that the punishment is intrinsic to the sin itself, like a parent who allows their teens more freedom but with that freedom they party late and drive drunk and bad things happen. No punishment comes from God Himself, they bear their own punishment; and neither is God responsible for their free choice.

Pastorally, this is a very important issue to grasp. God is not working against you! He is not keeping you stuck in your sin by His divine sovereignty! He is not withdrawing grace from you so that somehow your sin will fulfill His purposes. Don’t think that. It will only lead you to staying stuck. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. YOU CAN CHOOSE. Understand that if God were to negate the good in you, that means that God’s willed intent for you was for evil and God would be culpable. But God is not like that. His love for you is so great that God will always be for you, not against you and nothing in creation or any circumstance can separate you from the love of God (Ro 8).

A better way to think of God’s sovereignty is Him orchestrating events in life kind of like how in an orchestra the conductor guides all the musicians along. They are acting in their free will but are being led by the will of the conductor. I prefer using the term “orchestration” over the term “determination.”

The whole idea of free-will is that someone is responsible for the sins they decide. This means that they are response-able, truly able to respond. To say that God determines all things and then to say that somehow man is still responsible makes no sense. Determinists need to stop using the word “responsible” and be honest with themselves and instead use the phrase “they are guilty anyway somehow,” for no one can truly be responsible if they did not have a decision otherwise. Take John chapter nine for example. Jesus just healed the blind man and gave him sight and then the Pharisees did not believe the testimony of the man born blind from birth and that Jesus healed him. They didn’t want to believe. They refused to believe. This is what Jesus said:

And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. (Jn 9:39-41)

It is because the Pharisees had their own rational minds and moral compass and empirical evidence of this great miracle that had just occurred along with the Scripture writings of Moses which all pointed to Jesus, it is because of all those things that the Pharisees are truly responsible because they had sight. They said “we see,” therefore, they are guilty of their sin because of their own free choice to reject Jesus. They weren’t born incapable from seeing. They weren’t doomed from the womb. They had a free moral choice and they chose wrong—a choice which was not inevitable to make.

Resources:

Here is a YouTube playlist on Determinism

Here is a YouTube playlist on Non-Calvinism

I would also recommend reading this really good article

And reading the book: Determined to Believe? By John Lennox

Also, check out my previous article on Theodicy

And here are other articles from another website on free-will: First, Second