Job 1:10
Job 1:6-12
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? “Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.
John Calvin: “First, it must be observed that the will of God is the cause of all things that happen in the world; and yet God is not the author of evil.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.169, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “Whatever things are done wrongly and unjustly by man, these very things are the right and just works of God. This may seem paradoxical at first sight to some....” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.169, emphasis mine)
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: “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)
Calvinists argue that God is not the author of their sin, despite having allegedly been the “cause” of their sin, such that the events recorded in the book of Job are intended to mean: “What God caused Satan to do for evil, God meant for good.”
John Calvin: “But the objection is not yet resolved, that if all things are done by the will of God, and men contrive nothing except by His will and ordination, then God is the author of all evils.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.179, emphasis mine)
Thus, Calvin is fully aware of the dilemma.
John Calvin: “Thinking that the difficulty here may be resolved by a single word, some are foolish enough serenely to overlook what occasions the greatest ambiguity; namely, how God may be free of guilt in doing the very thing that He condemns in Satan and the reprobate and which is to be condemned by men. For the work is the same, not different; and it is thought an evil on both sides, that praise for just punishment should necessarily be ascribed to God and blame to men.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.179, emphasis mine)
Deterministic Calvinism cannot adequately explain this passage because it is all about permission, and deterministic Calvinism has no room for permission, but it all about hidden decrees.
Calvinist, Erwin Lutzer: “When Satan taunted God about Job, the Lord allowed Satan to inspire evil men to kill Job’s servants and steal his cattle; he gave Satan the power to use wind and lightning to kills Job’s children.” (The Doctrines That Divide, p.220, emphasis mine)
Erwin Lutzer: “Nonetheless, his permission necessarily means that he bore ultimate responsibility for it. After all, he could have chosen ‘not to permit’ it.” (The Doctrines That Divide, p.210, emphasis mine)
Erwin Lutzer: “In a word, what God permits, he ordains.” (The Doctrines That Divide, p.210, emphasis mine)
The problem with this argument is that permission is passive while decrees are active. Even if God orchestrated the events (i.e. the hedge) that inevitably led to the jealousy and frustration of Satan, which in turn, led to Satan’s challenge against God and Job, God is still in the passive role of merely permitting Satan to do according to his own evil desires, without directly implanting his desires. Calvinism teaches that God programs all desires, or else God is not sovereign.
John Calvin: “Robbers steal the cattle of the saintly Job. The deed is cruel and shameful. Satan by this means tempts him to desperation--an even more detestable machination. But Job himself indicates another author of the deed: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. He not unjustly transfers to God what could not be attributed without the robbers...he confesses that God took away by the hands of plunderers what was none the less taken by His consent and authority. ... We learn then that the work was jointly the work of God and of Satan and of the robbers. We learn that nothing happens but what seems good to God. How then is God to be exempted from the blame to which Satan with his instruments is liable?” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.179-180, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “From the first chapter of Job we learn that Satan appears in the presence of God to receive his orders, just as do the angels who obey spontaneously. The manner and the end are different, but still the fact is, that he cannot attempt anything without the will of God. But though afterwards his power to afflict the saint seems to be only a bare permission, yet as the sentiment is true, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done,’ we infer that God was the author of that trial of which Satan and wicked robbers were merely the instruments. Satan’s aim is to drive the saint to madness by despair. The Sabeans cruelly and wickedly make a sudden incursion to rob another of his goods. Job acknowledges that he was deprived of all his property, and brought to poverty, because such was the pleasure of God. Therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise, God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of his Judgments.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 18, section 1, emphasis mine)
Question: Did God cause the sickness and suffering of Job?
Answer: Did the father of the prodigal son, cause the eventual poverty and suffering of his prodigal son, simply by permitting him to leave and squander his inheritance? That’s why it is incorrect to render passive permission into active participation.
Job was not exactly correct in all of his points, and God challenged him on this. Job stated: “Know then that God has wronged me and has closed His net around me.” (Job 19:6) This answers his original question of, “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covers the faces of its judges. If it is not He, then who is it?” (Job 9:24) So one cannot use Job’s mistake in order to prove that God is the author of evil. Although Job was more accurate than Eliphaz and his associates, he did not know that Satan had challenged God concerning him, and that God permitted Satan’s challenge to go forth. I don’t think that there is anything in the book of Job to suggest that God secretly orchestrated Satan’s challenge, and thus, Calvin’s conclusion seems unwarranted.
Job indeed transferred responsibility to God, but that was in ignorance,
presuming that God was His accuser: “For the Almighty has struck me
down with his arrows. He has sent his poisoned arrows deep within my
spirit. All God’s terrors are arrayed against me.” (Job 6:4, NLT)
Instead, the reality was that God was his defender: “The LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.’” (Job 2:3) Again, God’s role in permission is passive, and at this point, the question must be asked: Would anyone similarly presume to transfer responsibility for the Prodigal Son’s misdeeds, back upon his father, for having merely permitted him to leave, with the financing from his inheritance? The difference between Arminianism and Deterministic Calvinism is that the latter attributes all things to the will of God as the cause and origin, in having actively decreed and scripted it into existence. This, Arminians reject.
Why does God allow evil in the world? Here is one Blog answer.
Michael Brown asks: “Sickness, suffering, sovereignty of God, Satan, what does God do?; what does Satan do?, especially as it relates to human sickness and disease? ... From the Book of Job, there are two very important truths that we learn. Number one, you see someone suffering, maybe a godly person, someone who loves the Lord, and you’ve known them for years, and suddenly all kinds of calamity, sickness, tragedy in the family, don’t say, ‘Oh, they must have sinned real bad, because these things only happen to wicked people,’ like Job’s friends did. Don’t judge Job, don’t judge your friend who loves the Lord, and say, ‘they must have sinned, otherwise this couldn’t have happened.’ Conversely, there’s another great lesson from Job. Don’t judge God. Job was wrong to think that God did these things. God gave permission to Satan, but it was the malignant hand of Satan that afflicted Job, that afflicted the children, that killed the children and destroyed the livestock. That was the work of the devil, the destroyer. That was not God doing that to Job. There is a distinction in the text. God says to the devil, ‘You’re moving Me to destroy him without a cause; you’re trying to incite Me.’ Job wrongly judged God, and said, ‘God’s guilty.’ See, the friends said, ‘Job, you’re guilty.’ Job said, ‘God, You’re guilty.’ Both were wrong. Sometimes inexplicable things happen to the righteous, but it is wrong to turn around and judge the person and say, ‘you must be in sin; that’s why this happened.’ And it is wrong to turn around and say, ‘Well, we don’t know why God sent that.’ Who said God sent it? Just because it happened, doesn’t mean that God sent it.” (Line of Fire, emphasis mine)
The irony is that initially, Job held the Calvinistic sovereignty-perspective, which of course was wrong: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) But it wasn’t “the Lord” who had “taken away.” That was the devil. The devil approached God; the devil made the challenge, which God merely permitted. Job adds: “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10) The more that Job reflected on God’s sovereign role in suffering, the more it upset him, and the more it made him want to blame God, both for causing it, and for wrongly judging him. Job’s sovereignty outlook had no room for someone other than God, being the cause of his suffering. Job’s friends also had the Calvinistic sovereignty-perspective, and essentially agreed that God caused Job’s disaster, but added that Job must have deserved it! The bottom line is that the Calvinistic sovereignty outlook means that everything has to fall back upon God, which in the end, stems from the mysterious, hidden decrees of God, which is what Calvinists continue to believe about this passage!
An Over-emphasis of the role of Satan can be just as much of a problem as the Under-emphasis of the role of Satan. Calvinism suffers from the latter, which is an under-emphasis of the role of Satan, by making him a mere puppet of the sovereign purposes of God.
Calvinist, John MacArthur “…as always, Satan is the instrument of God’s purposes.” (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Revelation 1-11, p.172)
This is an example of the under-emphasis of the role of Satan, and if Satan doesn’t have a free will, then the Calvinistic conclusions grow even darker. Nevertheless, this is in conjunction with Calvinistic Determinism, which holds that everything, that is, every thought, word and deed, are all the product of an alleged script, written by the hand of predestination.
Question: If God has an alleged, “eternal flock of the Father” who alone are predestined for salvation, and presuming that Job is in this flock, why would Satan go before God to complain about a hedge of protection around him? For if Calvinism was true, wouldn’t the real “hedge” of protection have been Unconditional Election? Moreover, if Job had Irresistible Grace, and presuming that Satan knew about it, why would he raise charges about what Job would do in adverse circumstances? After all, how exactly would these circumstances stand up to an alleged, irresistible regeneration, performed unilaterally by God?
Answer: Infusing Calvinism into this situation doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, however some caution should be applied with this line of reasoning, since Satan himself often makes very little sense. Recall that Satan also tried to tempt Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11), knowing full well who Jesus was, given that as God, He could not be tempted. (James 1:13)
