The first thing I want to do is to reiterate that my article was over “extreme Calvinism.” I am fully aware that there are many different levels of Calvinistic belief. I used Albert Mohler as an example because it appears he is more Calvinistic than Calvin himself was. This particular brand of Calvinism is all about “God’s sovereignty”, which for the hyper-Calvinist could likely be summed up with the word “control.” God is in control of all things; nothing happens in the cosmos without His ordination. Within this system, the hyper-Calvinist attempts to (unsuccessfully in my opinion) maintain that humans still have free will. However, it is referred to as compatibilistic freedom. Compatibilistic freedom is “the belief that human freedom and divine determination of all things are compatible. Human decisions are considered to be free if they are chosen without any external force or coercion. The person is “free” if she does what she desired to do and since God determines the human desires, divine determinism and human freedom are compatible.” An example may be helpful.
Suppose my wife is at Wal-Mart (the evil empire…haha) and is trying to decide whether she wants to purchase a Snicker’s candy bar or a Hershey’s candy bar. The hyper-Calvinist says that she is free to purchase whichever one she desires. It just so happens that God has given her a desire to purchase a Snicker’s bar, and she does just that. “How can that not be freedom?” the hyper-Calvinist questions. “She chose exactly what she wanted.” Yes, but what she wanted was determined for her, not determined by her.
Severe moral questions arise when we look at a severe example. A man is driving along a deserted country road when he pulls up to a teenage girl walking home from a friend’s house. He may choose to offer her a ride home or to simply pass her up. Or he may choose to stop the car, force her into it, and then take her off to a secluded location where he proceeds to rape and then murder her. The hyper-Calvinist says that he is free to do whichever he desires. The implication is that if he chooses to rape and murder this poor helpless victim then it is only because God gave him the desire to do so. And if God gave him that desire, how can this man possibly be held accountable for his actions? Furthermore, how can God escape the indictment that He is the author of evil? This is “extreme Calvinism”.
Since I know that Josh is a Calvinist, but I do not know to what degree, I am forced to write the remainder of this response as though he were extreme. I will be arguing on that assumption from here on out. If I am way off base on his beliefs, then I apologize. I know of no other way to state my case than to go back to that which I was critiquing in the first place: hyper-Calvinism (as briefly outlined above).
Molecular Control and Materialism
Josh begins by asking me precisely what molecules God is in control of, and what molecules He is not in control of. This, of course is a dangerous question to try and answer, and I’ll make no such attempt. It would be silly of me to try and give a list: God controls what I have for breakfast, but lunch is totally up to me. Ha! I take issue with the question because creation is not about molecules but about entities. It’s not so much about individual atoms as it is individuals.
Secondly, Josh warns me against materialism: “I want to warn you against the conclusion you have drawn that utter control of all physical matter necessitates the absence of free will. Is physical matter all that exists? Would it not be possible for God to control all the atoms in the cosmos, yet leave my soul its free choice of whether to accept or reject him?”
What I may have done in my article was assume a little too much about my audience. I was not drawing the conclusion that control over matter necessitates the absence of free will. I was attempting to allow the reader to get a glimpse of Dr. Mohler’s theology, which is that God does indeed control the human will (he aligns himself with the compatibilist freedom argument from earlier). I felt that particular snippet would help them to see a small part of the more troubling whole.
What we do know from the Bible (which is where I want to keep this discussion centered, as I’m sure Josh does, too) is that creation is vastly complex. Any time that we try to systematize it, we fail to do justice to the entire biblical account. My biggest problem with both Calvinism and Arminianism is that both are guilty of text proofing and neither adequately explains what we find occurring in the biblical narrative as a whole. Whenever you have a system in place that very neatly ties up God in a package (i.e. every molecule is under His absolute control; no molecule is under His absolute control) you can rest assured that your model is way off base.
With all of that in mind, I believe that Josh’s two questions about God’s specific control and materialism are just at the surface of the real issue between us: is God’s will the only one that has power in the universe? Certainly God could have chosen to set up the universe in this way. No creation is a necessary one, and neither is it necessary for God to give free will to the beings He creates. If we understand God’s giving freedom to His creations as a limitation to God then we fail to understand the nature of God. The Lord, being infinitely wiser than we, chooses to limit Himself all the time. The fact that He chooses to always be faithful to His promises is a limitation: He must keep His promises. The decision to make the world one way and not another is a limitation. His devotion to carrying out His redemptive purposes in mankind limits Him. The question is not whether God could have chosen to set up creation one way or another. The question is: how does the Bible say that God chose to set up creation?
God at War
What I want to argue is that the Bible tells us that there are other powers, principalities, and wills that are active in the universe. Some of these are working to thwart God’s purposes, some working to further them. I believe the Bible literally depicts God as being at war with the evil forces in both the unworldly and the earthly realms.

Some examples:
In Daniel 10 we are told of an unusual encounter that Daniel has with an angel of the Lord. After being given a vision that he doesn’t fully understand, Daniel prays and fasts for 21 days. At the end of this time the angel appears to him and says, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, on of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia” (Daniel 10:12-13).

What this angel says to Daniel is nothing less than astounding. A demon who was in charge of the Persian territory resists an angel of the Lord, and in doing so delays God’s message from being delivered.

In Psalm 82 the Lord warns angels that if they do not carry out the purposes for which they were created they will be destroyed.

Angels are depicted as having the ability to cause sickness (Mark 9:25; Luke 11:24) and even corrupt the human gene pool if they turn against God (Genesis 6:1-4)

Perhaps the most influential piece of biblical evidence to suggest that God is not behind all of the hurricanes and diseases is the fact that when Jesus had the opportunity to explain why a particular incident happen; when He had the chance to attribute all goodness and all evil to God, He didn’t take it. Instead, He immediately shifted the blame from the Kingdom of God to the kingdom of darkness.

In Luke 13:11 a crippled woman’s ailment is attributed to Satan. Luke 13:1-5 discusses people who were killed by a tower falling on them and some who were executed by Pilate; Jesus refuses to go along with the theology of the day and say that these happened by God because of sin.

In Mark 9:17-29, a demon-possessed boy is difficult to exercise. Jesus exclaims that this kind of demon can only come out through prayer and fasting. Why would that be the case if God’s will is the only one involved?

In fact, the only example that can be given of Christ attributing that God ordained an ailment is found in John 9:1-5. A blind man is sitting on the road, and the disciples ask Jesus why this man was born blind. In the New International Version it is written, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” However, there is a problem with the Greek. In the original language, this sentence is imperative. In other words, it has been mistranslated, probably in large part to fit with the theology of the translators. The original Greek would read something like this:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; but let God be glorified by His work in him!” Jesus doesn’t attribute the blindness to God, but He takes advantage of the blindness in order to manifest the work of the Father!

Though this cannot be a comprehensive article on the wills of other’s as presented in the Bible, I feel that there is a clear representation of God’s work in the world and His battle against the evil forces in the biblical narrative. It’s important to keep in mind that in the eschaton God will be victorious. The freedom He has granted to humans and angels (or demons) is finite and completely incapable of ever overcoming the Father.

Enabled Love
Josh’s next argument was on the topic of love. In my previous article I made the comment, “love that is simply generated through us by God but not from us for God isn’t real love.” Josh assumes that if this were the case then “real love must exist as a separate entity or ideal from God.” As we both know, this would move us into the area of dualism (that something coexists necessarily alongside of God throughout all eternity), as well as seem to deny the teaching of 1 John 4:8 that God is love.
However, I was not attempting to pick or choose when I made the above statement. True love for God must be both from him and for Him. I agree with Josh that we cannot love apart from God’s free gift of salvation. What I deny is that this free gift is offered only to specific predestined individuals. However, once God’s gift is accepted and He gives us the ability to love, He also inspires our love. True love is not either from us for God or through us by God—it is both. That is how the two may coexist. Unlike Josh, I do not believe that this is properly called “forced love.” Rather, it is enabled love.

The Tragic Story of Laura
So what can we say in closing? I have attempted to briefly outline part of what I believe about God’s providence. However, one more practical example may be beneficial. When I started part one of this series I entitled it “Katrina, Laura, and Calvin.” More than a couple of people have asked me who Laura is.
“Laura” is an imaginary name of a very real person with a very tragic story. It is taken from Gregory Boyd’s book, “Satan and the Problem of Evil”: **
Laura was living overseas with her missionary parents when another Missionary raped her. This rapist was put on leave but was allowed to rejoin the mission field within 18 months.
Laura was told that men of God sometimes do bad things and need God’s grace like everyone else. God forgives and forgets and so should she. Laura should love and forgive this man and not ever speak of this incident again.
She was told that God “always has His reasons” for allowing things like this to happen, though we won’t know them until we get to heaven. She needed to know that God was “still on His throne” and that what the missionary intended for evil, God intended for good.
Now, as a nineteen-year-old, Laura came to the pastor of Woodland Hills Church to tell him that she was feeling guilty over her inability to trust God. When he asked her what she was supposed to trust God for, her predictable Christian student answer was, “for God’s perfect will for my life.” When he inquired further what that meant, she cited him one of the most quoted verses by young Christians, Jeremiah 29:11. Finally, when he asked what she believed was included in the Lord’s plan to “prosper you and not to harm you,” she exclaimed in an impatient matter-of-fact voice: “Well, to have a good marriage, or course, to have the right ministry or job and to do well in it, and to be healthy and safe. You know, just to prosper!”
“Safe?” he asked her. “Do you mean to be safe from rapists?” After a long pause, she nodded a sheepish yes as her eyes began to tear up.”
“No wonder you can’t trust God, Laura,” he said. You already know that God can’t be trusted to deliver on that one.” Laura initially responded as though he had uttered a hideous blasphemy, yet she saw the obvious painful truth of the point he was making. For ten years she had been encouraged by a Christian community to trust God for bodily protection when all the while she knew from personal experience that it was not only up to God to decide this matter. Intuitively, she knew that free agents like the missionary who had abused her also have a mind and will of their own. She intuitively knew that if there is no divine guarantee against little girls getting raped, there is not guarantee that nineteen-year-old women will not get raped. The result of this instruction was that Laura now blamed herself for not being able to “trust God” to protect her from being raped.
What’s more, though she was too scared to admit it out loud to herself, Laura was privately enraged toward God. She understood her rape as a child ultimately to be God’s fault. We are supposed to accept such tragedies as somehow fitting into God’s plan—and yet we are supposed to trust God for protection from such tragedies! Could anyone have pieced together a more contradictory—and for victims like Laura, a more tormenting—theological puzzle? No wonder Laura was enraged.
A Plea for Caution
What we have to realize is that there are evil things that happen in this world that are not caused by God. When we point to the Lord after every terrible disaster or moral evil and exclaim how mighty and great His ways are that He would ordain such a catastrophe, unbelievers do not get to see the God of the Bible. What they see is the adversary who Jesus came to oppose.
**For those of you interested in learning more about a warfare worldview, I highly recommend picking up Gregory Boyd’s excellent theodicy, Satan and the Problem of Evil.

Tags: Josh Crain, Calvinism, open theism, Arminianism, Spiritual Warfare, hurricane Katrina, Albert Mohler, Southern Seminary