“Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings. There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.”
God’s will to “harden their hearts,” to show them “no mercy” and to “destroy them” would be consequent to their own evil deeds, and which was perhaps necessary so that they would not corrupt Israel with their idolatry. For God’s part, we know from Ezekiel 18:23 that God would prefer that the wicked turn from their sins, repent and be spared, even as evident from the Book of Jonah. God had decreed the destruction of Nineveh and directed Jonah to deliver the message, and when Nineveh repented, God relented on His threats of judgment. So, whenever we see examples from Scripture in which God determined to destroy and judge a nation, it is always understood as conditional, especially evident at Jeremiah 18:7-8: “‘At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.’”
What do Calvinists believe?
John Calvin: “We do not make the minds of men to be impelled by force external to them so that they rage furiously; nor do we transfer to God the cause of hardening, in such a way that they did not voluntarily and by their own wickedness and hardness of heart spur themselves on to obstinacy. What we say is that men act perversely not without God’s ordination that it be done, as Scripture teaches. Similarly it is said elsewhere that the fact that the inhabitants of Gibeon opposed Israel was ordained by God who made their heart obstinate (Josh 11.20).”674
Our reply:
Notice how contradictory Calvinism is. On the one hand, man acts “voluntarily and by their own wickedness” but then it is immediately followed by “God’s ordination.” It would seem that the objective of Calvinists is to find places in Scripture where God is portrayed in a negative light, in order to then ask: How is that morally superior to what you deem morally objectionable in Calvinism? The primary goal of the Calvinist [with such comments] is to defend absolute determinism. The existence of sin complicates things, and so Calvinists resolve the complication by showing that sin has a place in the overall plan and purpose of God. This way, no one can object to exhaustive determinism on the grounds that God would never ordain sin. The counter-argument to such exhaustive determinism is by highlighting conditionality in Scripture, whereby sin is not an ordination of God, but rather is something that God permits of an independent party and judges accordingly.
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674 Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 174-175, emphasis mine.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
