Calvinism Defended:

Of Sovereignty, Watches, and Sledgehammers

By

John Orlando

This is the twelfth section of the e-mail exchange I had with Bill, an individual who objected to Calvinism.  Click here to go back to the table of contents, or here to go to the full 88 page exchange. 

From My First E-mail: 

3.  It must be admitted by every Christian, Reformed or not, who believes that God is indeed sovereign, and all knowing, that God has indeed ordained all things that come to pass, to include all of the sin and evil that we see.  There are no maverick molecules or autonomous atoms running around in the universe (Matt 10:29-30; Acts 17:28).  Every thing, from the smallest to grandest, is under the providential rule and ultimate control of an absolutely sovereign and omnipotent God who does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.   If this were not the case, then God would not be sovereign in any meaningful sense, and He would in fact be completely powerless to bring about anything that He so desired (For example, take all of the prophetic statements in the Bible.  How could God state that certain events would take place without fail if man’s will were absolutely free/autonomous?  Obviously, God must be sovereign over and in the choices of men, otherwise, God’s eternal plan and purpose could and would be thwarted).  

Bill's Response:  See above on sovereign.  I am sovereign over my watch.  If it is out of time I can take a sledgehammer and smash in into bits or I can synergistically work with it until it is no longer out of time.  Both acts result in a watch that is no longer out of time.  Both are sovereign acts. Which one do you think is a better parable of God’s synergistic love?  

My Response:   Forgive me Bill, but I do not believe you really addressed seriously my statements above.  You did not deal with Matt 10:29-30 or Acts 17:28, and you did not deal with my citation of Dan 4:34 (which I merely stated in the flow of my response, because all that I said is in perfect conformity to that passage).  With reference to Daniel 4:34, here is what I said:

  “Every thing, from the smallest to grandest, is under the providential rule and ultimate control of an absolutely sovereign and omnipotent God who does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.”  (the bold and italics are a direct quote from Daniel 4:34).  You also failed to deal with the argument about prophecy.  Any single instance of prophecy is enough to completely overturn what you have been saying about freewill, sovereignty, cause and effect, etc.  Let me just ask simply:  does God have exhaustive knowledge of the future?  If so, how is it that He has that knowledge, and can it be said that man has a freewill in the sense that you seem to be maintaining?  Even if I grant the non-Reformed view of divine foreknowledge, how does that relieve you from having to answer the same questions posed to Calvinists?  I mean, even if God’s foreknowledge is only one whereby He is nothing more than the divine video watcher, who knows what will happen because he has viewed the video tape so to speak, He still decided to create that universe which He knew would exist with all of the evil, etc., and if that is the case, then how is that God is not the ultimate cause of everything?  

  Also your use of synergism here is spurious at best.  In theological terms, synergy is where two equal powers work together to bring about a desired effect.  A watch is inanimate, therefore, your using it to illustrate synergism simply won’t work. 

  Not only that, your use of the illustration may actually prove too much for you, for in reality you only make the Calvinists case.  In order for the watch to keep time, you must monergistically wind the watch, because the watch lacks the power to wind itself.  Now, you can stand there all day long and plead with the watch to wind itself, but, obviously, it won’t do anything in that regard, because it is unable to comply with your command.  Thus, you must exert power on the watch to cause it to keep time…you must wind the watch.  The watch simply responds with the necessary effects of your winding…it now keeps the time.  In salvation, the similar is true.  We are all watches that no longer keep the time, and, just like the watch, we are utterly unable to wind ourselves up in order that we might keep the time.  In order for that, God must monergistically bring His power to bear upon us, and “wind” us, so to speak.  In biblical terms, this is referred to as God taking out our stony heart and giving us a heart of flesh.  The work is completely God’s, and the effect that is brought about by God’s monergistic work is that we do precisely what you mentioned earlier:  we have our will liberated, and we willingly submit and yield to God whereas before we could not do that.  And who is it that receives all of the glory for this?  It is God. 

  As for your sledgehammer misrepresentation of the Reformed view, I could argue that this is precisely what you do with the grace of God:  you smash it to bits under the pagan, humanistic sledgehammer of creaturely “free will.”  Nothing of God’s grace is left.  

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