Genesis 3:16
Genesis 3:16
To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Question: What does “greatly multiply” mean, if pain
in childbirth was the plan all along?
Answer: To multiply means to change, and to “greatly
multiply” implies a significant change. Clearly, God
had a better plan for childbirth, and a better plan
altogether for mankind. God neither needs evil nor
wanted it. Man chose it.
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “God’s original purpose with Adam and Eve was to have fellowship, because real love wants to be shared. Regardless of the Fall, the Lord of glory will ultimately reach His purpose with us as His church.”
Ken Keathley: “Permission is problematic for the Calvinist--particularly to those who hold to determinism--because permission entails conditionality, contingency, and viewing humans as in some sense the origin of their own respective choices.” (A Southern Baptist Dialogue: Calvinism, p.197, emphasis mine)
Question: However, if pre-Fall, Adam and Eve were the origin of their own choices, what does that say of a Calvinistic, all-encompassing decree?
Answer: This issue of “permission” develops into an interesting dilemma for John Calvin’s theology in lieu of the “Author of Sin” charge.
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, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 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 1, Chapter 16, Section 4, emphasis mine)
Then what does this say about the Fall of man? Was that “ordered by God”?
John Calvin: “But where it is a matter of men’s counsels, wills, endeavours, and exertions, there is greater difficulty in seeing how the providence of God rules here too, so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.171-172, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “Indeed, the ungodly pride themselves on being competent to effect their wishes. But the facts show in the end that by them, unconsciously and unwillingly, what was divinely ordained is implemented.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.173, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “Does God work in the hearts of men, directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so that they do nothing but what He has ordained?” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.174, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “For the man who honestly and soberly reflects on these things, there can be no doubt that the will of God is the chief and principal cause of all things.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.177, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “But of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.178, emphasis mine)
Speaking of Augustine, John Calvin writes: “Augustine consistently teaches that if anything is left to luck, the world moves at random. And although he states elsewhere, that everything is carried out partly by man’s free will and partly by God’s Providence, he also shows clearly enough his real meaning. This is that men are controlled by Providence, since it would be absurd to believe that anything happens without God’s ordination, because then it would happen at random. For this reason, he also excludes any happening which depends upon human will, stating in clear terms that no cause must be looked for except the will of God.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 8, emphasis mine)
Question: So does this mean that the Fall
occurred by Providence?
Watch as this develops.
The Calvinistic, Westminster Confession of Faith: “The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.” (Of Providence, emphasis mine)
“Not by a bare permission.” Notice that John Calvin’s theology is in agreement:
John Calvin: “They again object, Were not men predestinated by the ordination of God to that corruption which is now held forth as the cause of condemnation? If so, when they perish in their corruptions they do nothing else than suffer punishment for that calamity, into which, by the predestination of God, Adam fell, and dragged all his posterity headlong with him. Is not he, therefore, unjust in thus cruelly mocking his creatures? I admit that by the will of God all the sons of Adam fell into that state of wretchedness in which they are now involved; and this is just what I said at the first, that we must always return to the mere pleasure of the divine will, the cause of which is hidden in himself. But it does not forthwith follow that God lies open to this charge.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 4, emphasis mine)
In other words, Adam and Eve fell by the “pleasure of the divine will,” or else God is not omnipotent.
John Calvin: “They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God, who is declared in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases, could have made the noblest of his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in accordance with free-will, he was to be the architect of his own fortune, that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to his desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which every thing depends, he rules over all?” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 7, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission, the object being to prove that the wicked perish only by the permission, but not by the will of God. But why do we say that he permits, but just because he wills? Nor, indeed, is there any probability in the thing itself—viz. that man brought death upon himself merely by the permission, and not by the ordination of God; as if God had not determined what he wished the condition of the chief of his creatures to be.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 8, emphasis mine)
In other words, God has a set script for His noblest creature, man, and that if any such creature were to script his own ways, according to libertarian freedom, then God could not be omnipotent.
John Calvin: “I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 7, emphasis mine)
So according to John Calvin, the answer is yes. In this sense, God did not permit it, but “arranged it.”
Question: Therefore, concerning pain in childbirth, how does it make sense to say that God multiplied what was already arranged?
Answer: Clearly, John Calvin does not mean “arranged” based upon what was permitted, but arranged based upon the pleasure of God’s decree.
John Calvin: “Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission, the object being to prove that the wicked perish only by the permission, but not by the will of God. But why do we say that he permits, but just because he wills? Nor, indeed, is there any probability in the thing itself—viz. that man brought death upon himself merely by the permission, and not by the ordination of God; as if God had not determined what he wished the condition of the chief of his creatures to be.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 8, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “First, the eternal predestination of God, by which before the fall of Adam He decreed what should take place concerning the whole human race and every individual, was fixed and determined.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121, emphasis mine)
The key words are “fixed” and “determined.” Thus, God permits nothing; everything that is, is willed from above, and happens exactly according to design. But now watch as Calvin back-tracks:
John Calvin: “As to the first man, we must hold he was created perfectly righteous and fell by his own will; and hence it comes about that by his own fault he brought destruction on himself and on all his race. Adam fell, though not without God’s knowledge and ordination, and destroyed himself and his posterity; yet this neither mitigates his guilt nor involves God in any blame. For we must always remember that he voluntarily deprived himself of the rectitude he had received from God, voluntarily gave himself to the service of sin and Satan, and voluntarily precipitated himself into destruction. One excuse is suggested, that he could not evade what God had decreed. But his voluntary transgression is enough and more than enough to establish his guilt. For the proper and genuine cause of sin is not God’s hidden counsel but the evident will of man.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.121-122, emphasis mine)
Question: How does the concept of the “voluntary” and “evident will of man,” get squeezed into a deterministic, fixed and determined “decree”?
John Calvin: “God knowingly and willingly suffers man to fall; the reason may be hidden, but it cannot be unjust.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.122, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “So God in ordaining the fall of man had an end most just and right which holds the name of sin in abhorrence. Though I affirm that He ordained it so, I do not allow that He is properly the author of sin.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.123, emphasis mine)
Calvin: “I always affirm that the nature of man is at first created upright, lest the depravity which he contracted should be ascribed to God; and similarly that the death to which, though formerly the heir of life, he rendered himself subject proceeded from his own fault so that God cannot be considered its author.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.123, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by His will, but merely by His permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater details shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.176, emphasis mine)
- God decrees what is pleasing to Him.
- Sin is not pleasing to God.
- God decrees sin.
- God decrees what is not pleasing to Him.
- God does not otiosely permit things; He omnipotently arranges them.
- God is not the author of the evil that He determinately fixed.
John Calvin: “To this opinion of this holy man I subscribe: in sinning, they did what God did not will in order that God through their evil will might do what He willed.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.123, emphasis mine)
This sounds like a dog chasing its tail. According to Calvin, they did what God “arranged,” and not what God “otiosely permits,” and yet Calvin also defers to their “voluntary” defection.
John Calvin: “If anyone object that this is beyond his comprehension, I confess it. But what wonder if the immense and incomprehensible majesty of God exceed the limits of our intellect? I am so far from undertaking the explanation of this sublime, hidden secret, that I wish what I said at the beginning to be remembered, that those who seek to know more than God has revealed are crazy. Therefore let us be pleased with instructed ignorance rather than with the intemperate and inquisitive intoxication of wanting to know more than God allows.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.123, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “But now, removing from God all proximate causation of the act, I at the same time remove from Him all guilt and leave man alone liable. It is therefore wicked and calumnious to say that I make the fall of man one of the works of God. But how it was ordained by the foreknowledge and decree of God what man’s future was without God being implicated as associate in the fault as the author or approver of transgression, is clearly a secret so much excelling the insight of the human mind, that I am not ashamed to confess ignorance.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.123-124, emphasis mine)
Calvinism vs. Logic
John Calvin essentially admitted that he
couldn’t give a logical explanation for Calvinism,
since what he gives with permission, he takes
away with an arranged ordination, and what he
gives with a voluntary free will, he takes away
with an all-encompassing decree.
Calvinist. R.C. Sproul: “But Adam and Eve were not created fallen. They had no sin nature. They were good creatures with a free will. Yet they chose to sin. Why? I don’t know. Nor have I found anyone yet who does know.” (Chosen By God, p.31, emphasis mine)
