Genesis 2:19
Genesis 2:19
Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
This doesn’t seem to square with Determinism at all.
Question: So who named the animals?
Answer: There are some things that God has placed in the dominion of man, and God willfully chose to do this, out of His own sovereign prerogative. Ironically, God is sovereign enough to do this, even though some might argue that it would otherwise diminish His sovereignty to do so. Isn’t that something? Also consider James 2:4 which states: “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” God has placed the having in the dominion of man for the asking, and with asking from the right motives, being the implemented parameter. So once again, we see God willing to place matters conditionally into the hands of man, and God’s sovereignty remains undiminished because this is His sovereign choice. Of course, Calvinism requires that the whole thing be predetermined, as per Determinism, but that arguably makes the whole thing into a charade also, which Calvinists strangely do not mind.
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “If you define free will as a person having a choice between at least two different options, with that choice being free and unnecessitated, (meaning that it’s really up to that person), then the Genesis passage is one of my favorites to prove free will is present in the Bible. How so? I usually start with the example of a Father saying to his daughter: ‘You can name the doll whatever name that you want it to have....’ Any normal child with a normal and even ordinary mind takes that statement by the Father to mean the following things: (1) the Father is giving the child the choice, (2) the Father is not making the choice, but leaving it to the child, (3) the child really HAS A CHOICE (IS NOT JUST MAKING A CHOICE) as they could call the doll various different names (both sensible and funny), (4) the Father has not already decided the name of the doll, (5) the choice is up to the child, it is their choice, (6) the choice is not necessitated, they don’t have to name the doll some pre-decided name. Now CHILDREN UNDERSTAND THIS and what is going on in Genesis. Instead of a doll, God is giving Adam the choice of what to name the animals. That’s a lot of naming to do, but if Calvinistic Determinism was true, in which God decided how everything would go before it happened, then God is deceiving Adam, and the names are not up to him at all, but are merely made to look that way.”
And according to Calvinism, all of that is predetermined (deception or otherwise), because without which, God couldn’t otherwise foreknow it (at least according to the unique Calvinist understanding of foreknowledge, as opposed to the Arminian’s eternal-now perspective of divine foreknowledge).
Calvinists love to make statements like, “We know man has a free will, and we know that God is sovereign, but how both are true, we simply do not know.” In other words, man is free, but only within the parameters of Determinism, which of course completely nullifies liberty. So when the Calvinist appeals to mystery, what he forgets to consider is whether his presuppositions concerning God’s sovereignty are correct. Rather, it is simply assumed without question, even though the reality is that verses like Genesis 2:19 completely blow up the presuppositions. So this is yet another passage from the Old Testament that the committed Calvinist must allegorize.
Genesis 1:26-28 states: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
And that’s God’s sovereign prerogative, is it not? (It’s not as if God has given over all rulership to man, regardless of how the Calvinists will portray the alternative.)
Another member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “In this we see a proper expression of God’s sovereignty in delegating that sovereignty to man. Dominion is a synonym for sovereignty and by this we see a decree antithetical to that of Calvinist Determinism. I do not think the Calvinist mind wraps itself around the biblical concept of man’s creation being higher than that of the angelic host, that God created man for the purpose of dominion in this world and that as a wise sovereign God, He delegated authority as He omnisciently determined.”
I agree that Calvinists have difficulty in wrapping their minds around some things, because they have a Deterministic perspective in focus, which otherwise blocks certain passages from expressing the truths therein. So the problem is the presupposition of Determinism itself. Drop that, and the problem fades.
