“Now Abraham journeyed from there toward the land of the Negev, and settled between Kadesh and Shur; then he sojourned in Gerar. Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’ So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, ‘Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is married.’ Now Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, ‘Lord, will You slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, “She is my sister”? And she herself said, “He is my brother.” In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.’ Then God said to him in the dream, ‘Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her. Now therefore, restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.’”
The text tells us why God frustrated Abimelech’s attempt to take Sarah as his wife, and it was because God knew that he was innocent in this matter, which God readily acknowledged. God didn’t have to do this. He could have just killed Abimelech and all who were his. However, God is infinitely fair-minded and knew that Abimelech had been deceived. So, God frustrated his plans up until that point and gave him one last chance with a solemn warning. Abimelech wisely complied. So, why do Calvinists have an issue here?
What do Calvinists believe?
Theodore Zachariades: “Here’s man with his free will. Here’s man wanting to sleep with this woman. He is the king of the country. He is the most powerful man in the nation. He can do whatever he wants and yet God tells him, ‘I did not let you touch her.’ Now, this is one example. There are many like it. What does the New Testament tell us? Well, of course, there again, passages, passages and passages. The main reason why I became a Calvinist, if that’s the term, is because I recognize that in Ephesians chapter 1 (and this is one of those few places, gentlemen, where ‘all’ means all) God works all things after the council of His will, even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so, and when He wants to, He orders those to commit adultery, when He wants to.”653
Our reply:
The simple fact that God intervened to frustrate Abimelech’s plans does not disprove that he had a free and independent will, but rather proves it, since God was frustrating Abimelech’s own will and intention. Moreover, notice how Calvinists conclude from this narrative that sin ultimately comes from God. That will be a major point of contention.
In a larger sense, the Calvinist perspective seeks to ask why God would forbid adultery by Abimelech with Sarah but then allow adultery by Abraham with Hagar, and if God forbade the former but permitted the latter, doesn’t it show that God had a purpose in allowing the one and not the other, and moreover, if He purposed to allow something, then doesn’t that demonstrate that He, in fact, decreed it? First, in terms of Abimelech, God made a promise that He wouldn’t be able to keep if He allowed him to take Sarah as his wife, and so God intervened to thwart him. However, allowing Abraham to acquiesce to Sarah’s wishes to sleep with Hagar did not prevent God from still keeping His promise to her. Second, just because something is allowed, doesn’t mean that it is wanted. Consider the parable of the Prodigal Son. The father allowed his son to leave with his share of the inheritance. So, does his permission indicate that he, in some way, wanted for his son to leave, or had a purpose in his son leaving? The better way to look at it is that the father simply didn’t want to hold him against his will and thus acquiesced to his desire to leave. Similarly, God lets people freely reject Him, though that is not what He prefers. Nonetheless, such permission is necessary to having real relationships, since for there to be real love, one must be free to love or free not to love. Mankind is therefore granted autonomy of reason in order to fulfill the relational purposes of God.
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “God prevented Abimelech from committing an act of sin. If God could keep him from sinning in this instance, could He not have kept him from sinning in any other given instance? Of course. And yet, He had not done so. Why? He had a purpose in restraining Abimelech in this instance. And if He has a purpose in this instance, does He not have a purpose in all instances, with each and every person? Surely.”654
James White: “And does this not mean that God’s eternal decree, by which He acts in this world, includes the existence of evil for a purpose, one that leads to God’s glorification through the work of Jesus Christ in redeeming a people unto Himself?”655
Our reply:
If God has an eternal decree by which He has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, then why even speak of God preventing or allowing something in the first place? Those two concepts do not seem congruent with meticulous, exhaustive determinism.
A major difference between Calvinists and non-Calvinists is over the question of where sin comes from. Does sin come from man, or does it come from God? While some Calvinists may wish to say both, in actuality, Calvinism teaches that sin comes from a decree made by God. Non-Calvinists obviously disagree. In Calvinism, though, God has a purpose for every single sin, and therefore, even what God permits, He decrees to permit it, and so everything, inclusive of sin and evil, is meticulously and exhaustively determined by God. Calvinists, then, have to weigh and ponder the implications of such a decree.
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “If, as we have seen, the Bible teaches the absolute sovereignty of God over His creation and that He has a purpose He is accomplishing in all that happens as part of His divine decree, what of the obvious fact that man makes choices and God holds him accountable for them? Despite the constant misrepresentation of the opponents of God’s sovereignty, to fully appreciate the biblical evidence is to recognize that God’s decree does not make Him the author of sin.”656
Our reply:
Non-Calvinists who reject Calvinism’s purported decree therefore do not share the same moral dilemmas and logical conundrums that Calvinists face.
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “Joseph, knowing that his brothers have committed evil against him, knowing that what they did was wrong, knowing even that God had actually restrained their evil—I don’t know why God didn’t just put him in a situation where they would do freely—but God actually restrains men’s evil.”657
Our reply:
Nowhere does it state that Abimelech wasn’t able to act freely. He certainly was acting freely, and it was getting him in trouble because—unbeknownst to him—he was the victim of a lie by Abraham. God did not thwart his free-will. Rather, God thwarted his plan to marry Sarah, because God knew that he was innocent, but now having been warned, he would no longer remain innocent if he continued on.
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653 Free Will Debate: What is the Biblical View of Free Will?, 43:10-44:17, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfyOmkaDtMg.
654 Debating Calvinism (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2004), 41.
655 Ibid.
656 Ibid., 42.
657 William Lane Craig vs James White – Calvinism vs Molinism on the Problem of Evil, 37:06-37:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECcN-fisQRk, emphasis mine.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
