One way that Atheists assail Christianity is by asking rhetorical questions like: “Given all of the evil and misery in this world, if there really was a God, how could he be good?” So, then, how would Christians explain this? The dilemma is referred to as the “problem of evil.” Most often, the answer is that God is good, but He has given mankind free-will, and so man’s free-will is to blame, not God. This is also where Calvinism enters the picture. In Calvinism, all sin comes from God who ordained precisely every last bit of it—allegedly for a “good purpose,” namely self-glorification at humanity’s expense—and mankind is not given any type of autonomous, libertarian free-will in order to do anything different from what was already decreed. Naturally, then, when Atheists assail Christianity, it is often from the perspective of Calvinism’s gross distortion of Christianity. So, Christians must then advise Atheists that not all Christians are Calvinists, and hence some of the Atheist’s fiercest objections against Christianity are only applicable to a relative minority of Christians. Atheists, then, wishing to preserve their strongest denunciation against Christianity, will try to insist that Calvinism does, in fact, represent mainstream Christianity.
The non-Calvinist perspective on the existence of evil in the world is if God is going to govern our universe through the cause and effect choices of truly free creatures, then it’s inevitable that cruelty and evil will end up occurring, and if God were to intervene in all cases to prevent our bad choices, where would it end, and how would people be able to learn and grow in their human experience on the lesson of our choices? Moreover, how would people learn “faith” to choose God, if God micromanaged all of our choices for us? How would we learn to choose God if He did not permit us the real choice to either choose Him or reject Him? Hence, for faith to exist, God would necessarily need to obscure Himself during times of tragedy and horror, except when we should seek Him, and then He allow us to find Him, on His terms.
What do Calvinists believe?
How would God truly be in control of the limits of creaturely evil unless He determined it? God’s decree of whatsoever comes to pass naturally places a check on evil. The reason why we can trust God is because He both controls evil and has a long term plan for evil, including a purpose for every single act of evil ever allowed to be committed.
Our reply:
It appears that Calvinists wish to solve the problem of evil by making God into the One who is determining it. Then it follows that if God is good, evil cannot be all that bad, especially when viewed as a whole. However, let’s consider the opposite approach. Evil is all that bad, and there is nothing good in evil. God is holy, and therefore He will not have any part in evil. Just because God allows independent creatures to do evil, that doesn’t mean that He is pleased by someone doing it, any more than the father of the Prodigal Son would be glad to see his son leave home, simply because he allowed it. God doesn’t cause evil, but He is aware of the evil of others, and at times will redeem good from the evil of others, but never causing the evil that He redeems.
The primary objection against Calvinism is that it sacrifices God’s goodness and holiness in favor of exhaustive determinism. Why? Perhaps Calvinists need the warm emotional blanket of determinism so that they can better trust in God—which means they don’t really trust God. Ask Calvinists, “So, you can’t trust God unless He determined all sin? What if God was powerful enough to deal with sin, without being the cause of it? You couldn’t trust in a God like that?” It certainly wouldn’t seem like much of a God who has to cause all sin in order to be in control over it.
What do Calvinists believe?
Why should I be more comforted by a God who allows sin, when He otherwise could have stopped it, versus a God who causes all sin for a specific purpose that He uses for good? At least the God who “causes all sin” still remains in control and is not simply letting everything spin out of control.
Our reply:
If God didn’t allow moral evil then how would there be occasion for moral goodness? To disallow disobedience, necessarily also disallows obedience. God created the fact of freedom so that mankind could participate with God in acts of righteousness.
There is nothing immoral for God to allow sin as a result of free moral agency, but there is a lot wrong in meticulously causing all moral evil and then blaming secondary agents for doing what is decreed. As for preventing all sin, if God really was to do that, then it would come at the cost of no one being able to choose, from their heart, to love God, thus robbing Him of genuine fellowship. While God surely could have created robots, what would He really gain from that?
As an analogy, imagine if a Landlord rented a house to tenants who misused the property as an illegal “grow-house”? In such a case, would our laws prosecute the Landlord for the illegal acts of the tenants committed on the Landlord’s property? Of course not.
Consider it this way. If God created angels having free-will, knowing some would be faithful and others unfaithful, should God have foregone creation altogether, on account of those who go bad? Why should God deny Himself the benefit of having holy angels, on account of some who become unholy demons? Moreover, why should God deny Himself the benefit of having saints, on account of others who become atheists? God is not being selfish here. It is the demons and the atheists who are the ones who are selfish, on account of denying God the glory that He is rightly due as their God-Creator.
What do Calvinists believe?
In the Garden of Eden, why did Adam exercise his own free-will to choose to sin? You can’t say “because he chose to,” since that would be a mere repetition of the question in a declarative form.
Our reply:
Calvinists demand an external cause because they refuse the non-Calvinist’s premise of an internal cause. To demand an external reason is to assume determinism. Contrary to Calvinism, non-Calvinists believe that God created Adam and Eve with autonomy of reason and creative intelligence, so that as individuals, they were fashioned to reason this way and that, so that the choices of Adam and Eve would be the creature’s own, and not God’s.
To be sure, Calvinists don’t believe that God is a monster. However, many non-Calvinists cannot bring themselves to understand how He wouldn’t be, given a Calvinist’s insistence upon asserting that God causes the evil that He redeems, rendering it both certain and necessary. The best theologians on the Calvinist side can only assert “transcendence” as a “mystery that cannot logically be solved,” though which is also just a theological broth for spiritualized gaslighting.
How is a good and holy God not left damaged by the sin and evil of mankind?
Have you ever watched “Forensics Files”? It’s a TV show—and there are others like it—which shows how persistency in investigations and sometimes the use of technology has helped uncover crimes and led to murder mysteries being solved and the bad guys being put away. If you’ve ever watched those kinds of TV shows, do you ever catch yourself getting angry? Did you ever catch yourself being frustrated and angry that evil people could actually do the evil things they do, in destroying lives and separating family members? Sometimes it causes me to get angry with God? How could God allow this? Other times, I wonder how God is not mentally, morally and spiritually left damaged—in some way—by all of the evil of mankind. The technology in our present era allows us the use of DNA testing to catch criminals, but what about all of the people who preceded this type of technology? Imagine all of the evil of evildoers from hundreds of years ago who escaped justice and went on committing crimes because there was no DNA technology to catch them and they simply got away with it? Of course, they would have all died by now, and being in eternity, they haven’t gotten away with anything and are now facing the eternal reality that they can never, ever escape. Before, when they were alive, they got away with their evil, but now in eternity, they cannot get away from their evil. But I’m still left wondering: How is God left unaffected or undefiled by all of the immorality of mankind? In our own cases, we know what sins we’ve done, and we know that God knows what we’ve done. Now multiply that times billions of people through all of human history, and you’re saying that God is unaffected by all that evil? He’s not tainted in some way? How? I certainly would be. When I watch “Forensics Files,” sometimes I lose my religion, just in anger that certain acts of evil would simply be allowed by God to happen. In Christian theology, this type of dilemma is called, “The Problem of Evil.” How do Christian theologians resolve these types of issues?
In Calvinism, God decreed it all for His glory—nothing happens by the random chance of the free will of individuals, as everything is predestined by God, exhaustively and meticulously. But that doesn’t sound very good. That would mean that God remains unaffected because He started out being evil and then decreeing evil. So, Calvinism doesn’t resolve our dilemma at all. In fact, it only makes our dilemma worse. Contrast that with non-Calvinism, which affirms free-will. In that case, God didn’t dream up all of the evil in the world and render it certain, but instead God allows free moral agents to exercise their own will, thus leaving God’s perfect world in moral shambles for God to have to deal with, while yet escaping being morally affected by it all.
In that case, how would it be possible? How would it be possible for God to emerge from humanity’s evil somehow intact? One answer could be found in the illustration of woman who accidentally loses her wedding ring, which ends up in the trash and hauled away by a garage truck. As implausible as it is, imagine if she tracked down the garbage truck all the way to the dump site, and finally after hours of sorting through the trash, she finally gets to her garbage bag and after sorting through the bag she finds her ring. That would hardly be a likely scenario, but if it happened, and if she recovered her ring, would she really care about the dirtiness of the trash, or would she be fixated on the joy of recovering her ring? As fallen creatures, God says we can be redeemed. Because of what Jesus did on the Cross two thousand years ago, we can be redeemed, if we confess our sins to God and ask for His forgiveness. Because of the Cross, we can become the treasure that is redeemed from the world’s trash. If that is what God focuses His attention upon, then that might tune out the trouble He had to endure in patiently enduring us.
Moreover, throughout human history, there have been plenty of tyrants in positions of power, abusing people in their abuse of authority. But in the case of a Pharaoh, a “Moses” can emerge. And in the case of Goliath, a “David” can emerge. Even in the worst of times, through the abhorrent evil actions of people in power, sometimes heroic and wonderful tear-jerking things can emerge. That’s the treasure from the trash. So, if God were to focus His attention on recovery and redemption, perhaps He can indeed escape the world’s ugliness untainted, undefiled and uncorrupted.
Lee Strobel: “The first thing to understand is that God is not the creator of evil and suffering. How did it come about then? Well God, from eternity past, has existed in perfect harmony, perfect community, perfect love—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, in this community of love from eternity past—when He decided to create humankind, He wanted us to experience that greatest value in the universe, which is love. Well, in order for us to experience love, He had to give us free will. Why? Because we have to have the ability to either choose to love or not to love. When my daughter was little, she had a doll. And you pull a string in the back of the doll and it would say, ‘I love you,’ you know. Did that doll love her? No, of course not. It was like a robot. It was programmed to say it, because it doesn’t have free will. So, here’s the problem: Humankind took our free will and rebelled against God—denied God, suppressed the knowledge of God, turned away from God, and acted selfishly and so forth—and that introduced two kinds of evil into the world. Number 1: Moral evil came into the world, that is, when you and I make selfish decisions or we hurt other people, and so forth. It’s been estimated that up to 90% of the suffering in the world is this kind of moral evil where we hurt each other. In other words, I can take my hand and I can feed a hungry person, or I can take that same hand and pick up a gun and kill someone. But it’s a little disingenuous to pick up a gun and kill someone and blame God. He gave use free will; we’ve introduced moral evil into the world. And then natural evil. The Bible tells us that our sin, our rebellion, has caused the world to react. So in other words, it’s almost as if we told God to shove off, and He partially honored our request. Nature began to rebel. Genetic breakdown and illness and so forth entered into the world. Earthquakes and viruses, and so forth, came into the world. And the Bible says the earth is groaning for redemption.”460
Lee Strobel: “Secondly, even though suffering is not good, God can use it for good. And we see this in Scripture, time after time. We see it how God uses it to bring people to faith. Romans 8:28 says if you love God, if you’re called according to His purpose, God will take the things that happen in your life, even the negative things, and turn them together for good. We see the story of Joseph, who was imprisoned, who was falsely accused, the dozen years he’s in prison, and yet he ultimately is elevated to a place where he can help other people and save his family. And he says what they intended for evil, God used for good. And, you know, sometimes, John, I’ll have people say to me, ‘Oh, yes, sure. God can use suffering for good—not my case—you don’t know how much I’ve suffered.’ Well, let me tell you something. When I hear something like that, I say, think about it. God took the worst thing that could ever happen in the universe, which is deicide—the death of the Son of God on a cross—the worst thing that could ever happen, and He created out of that, the best thing that could ever happen, which is redemption for us, who put our trust in Him, and the opening of Heaven forever.”461
Of course, Calvinists will cite Acts 4:28 to add that God predestined the Cross, which is true, but not that God caused the evil thoughts and intentions of the evildoers. God uses the evil desires of others to redeem good from evil, but never that God causes the evil desires that He redeems.
Lee Strobel: “He was atoning for the sins of you and me. You know, He was paying the penalty so that we don’t have to. I mean, this is fantastic that He said, you know, ‘You’ve sinned, you’ve fallen short of My glory. You deserve eternal punishment as a result. You deserve to be separated from Me forever. Let Me take the penalty on Myself. I will pay it in your place. And then I will offer to you as a free gift, My grace. You can receive it, or you can reject it.’ He gives us that choice.”462
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460 Ep.2 The Most Astonishing Miracles, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX6pQEH9D0o, 3:27-5:32.
461 Ibid., 6:20-7:35
462 Ibid., 9:20-9:49.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
