“Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.”
So who named the animals? There are some things that God has placed under the dominion of man (i.e. control, power and liberty), and God willfully chose to do this by His own sovereign prerogative. Also consider James 2:4: “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” So, God has placed the having in the dominion of man for the asking, though on condition of asking from within godly motives. So again, we see that God is willing to conditionally place matters in the hands of man, and God’s sovereignty remains undiminished because that is His sovereign choice—meaning that He wanted it to be that way.
Consider the following illustration: A father gives a doll to his daughter and says to her, “You can name the doll whatever name that you wish to give it.” In any normal sense, the mind of the child would understand the father to mean the following: (1) the father is giving the child a choice, (2) the father is not making the choice, but leaving it to the child, (3) the child really has a choice (is not just making a choice) as the child could name the doll various different names (both sensible and funny), (4) the father has not already decided the name of the doll, (5) the choice is up to the child, as it is their choice, (6) the choice is not necessitated, as they don’t have to name the doll some pre-decided name.
Instead of a doll, God is giving Adam the choice of what to name the animals. That is a lot of naming to do, but if Calvinistic determinism was true, in which God determined the names before Adam did, then God is deceiving Adam, and the names are not up to him at all but are merely meant to appear that way.650
What do Calvinists believe?
Through Compatibilism, God’s choices for us perfectly coincides simultaneously with our own human choices.
Our reply:
It is agreed that in Calvinism’s conception of Compatibilism that humans make choices, but would they really have a choice, if all of their choices are already predetermined for them? The answer is—not really. It’s not a meaningful choice, if the choice is already made for you. The end result of Compatibilism is undeniably puppeteering.
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650 Helpful illustration provided by “The Society of Evangelical Arminians.”
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
