John 8:44
John 8:44 (see also 1st John 3:8)
“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar and the father of all lies.”
John Calvin: “Satan is said to be ‘the father of all lies’ because he is estranged from God, in whom alone dwells the truth and from whom it flows as a unique foundation.” (John: Calvin, The Crossway Classic Commentaries, p.224, emphasis mine)
Question: Why is Satan called “the father of all lies”?
Answer: Perhaps because the devil is the first one to lie, particularly in the Garden of Eden when the devil deceived Eve: “The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Genesis 3:4-5)
The concern of Arminians relates to the Calvinist doctrine of Determinism:
John Calvin: “Everything is controlled by God’s secret purpose, and nothing can happen except by his knowledge and will.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Bk. 1, Ch. 16, Sect. 3, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “What we must prove is that single events are ordered by God and that every event comes from his intended will. Nothing happens by chance.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book I, Ch. 16, Sect. 4, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “When he uses the term permission, he means that the will of God is the supreme and primary cause of everything, because nothing happens without his order of permission.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book I, Ch. 16, Sect. 8, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “He has plenty of reasons for comfort as he realises that the devil and all the ungodly are reined in by God, so that they cannot conceive, plan or carry out any crime, unless God allows it, indeed commands it. They are not only in bondage to him, but are forced to serve him. It is the Lord’s prerogative to enable the enemy’s rage and to control it at will, and it is in his power to decide how far and how long it may last, so that wicked men cannot break free and do exactly what they want....” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book I, Ch. 17, Sect. 11, emphasis mine)
Given these things, Arminians charge Calvinism of making God the father of all lies. In other words, according to Calvinism, God predestined everything from the beginning, including all evil, thereby making God the author of everything that is evil. This would include murder, adultery, theft, covetousness, fornication, lying, etc. Jesus, however, plainly stated that Satan, not God, was the holder of the title: “a liar and the father of all lies.” It is not possible for any being or entity, including the entity, “all lies,” to have more than one father. No one would argue otherwise. Since Satan is then, according to Jesus, “the father of all lies,” there can only be one “father of all lies.” It is not possible for Satan and God to both be the father of all lies. Either Satan is the father of all lies, as Jesus stated, or it is God, by way of Hard Determinism. By claiming that God is the ordainer of all sin and all wickedness, has Calvinism, by default, given God the dreadful title: “father of all lies”?
Calvinist, Erwin Lutzer: “The devil is also a being filled with only hatred and deceit. He is a rebellious liar and malicious sadist. He desires to see humans suffer for suffering’s sake. Thus he always stands in opposition to God even when he does what God ordains.” (The Doctrines That Divide, p.221, emphasis mine)
If Satan does what God ordains, how do you tell the difference between the two? In other words, if God plans wickedness, according to Calvinism, and the devil practices wickedness, how are they logically in opposition? If God has predestined everything that will ever come to pass, then how do Calvinists logically discern the difference between what God does and what the devil does?
The definition of “grace” is unmerited favor. God’s grace can only be considered true grace if He was not responsible for causing the sin that sent Christ to die at Calvary. According to Calvinism, God is responsible for all the evil and sin in the world since it was a component of His predestined plan from before the foundation of the world. If Calvinists are correct, it was not God’s grace that sent Christ to the cross but an act of His cleaning up the mess that He wrought when He ordained evil. When He gave His only begotten Son, either He was paying for the damage He caused when He created the sin problem, which is not grace, or He was granting unmerited favor by providing His blameless Son as the propitiation for our sin, which is grace. In other words, if God predetermined every act of wickedness, as Calvinism teaches, then the grace of sending His own Son was not grace at all, but only cleaning up His own mess. However, if man, and not God, is the true author and inventor of wickedness, together with the Satan, then God’s grace of sending His own Son is indeed true grace, because in sending His own Son, God bails us out of the mess that we, ourselves, have made. Now it becomes our mess, and God’s grace makes salvation, redemption, justification and glorification possible to all, and available to all, by believing in His Son. That’s the difference in “grace” when examined from the two competing systems of theology.
