On the one hand, Calvinists will often argue (using passages like Romans 9:20-21) that mankind has as much control over how he believes and behaves as a piece of clay has over its own shape, while on the other hand vehemently objecting to their opponent’s accusations of making men into mere puppets.
Some Calvinists want to have their cake and eat it too on this point. If they are going to interpret these biblical analogies in such a way that removes mankind’s responsibility in the process, then they cannot object to another analogy which draws the exact same conclusion. After all, what more or less responsibility does a puppet have in relation to the puppet master than a lump of clay has in relation to the potter on Calvinism’s interpretation? If you want to interpret Paul’s analogy of the potter and the clay literally to mean that man has no say in how he believes and responds, then own it. Don’t object to other analogies that draw the exact same implications unless you are not willing to live with those implications.
One of the problems for Calvinists is the natural reaction that people often have when hearing of Calvinism for the very first time: “Oh! That would turn us into puppets and robots!” So although Calvinists don’t actually teach that mankind is reduced to being puppets, it is a natural implication, just like how Calvinism’s critics also charge Calvinism with being fatalistic.
As a child, did you ever have a talking doll? It can be a novelty at first, but a child will grow bored of it, since it only says what it’s programmed to say. So, if God programmed all creation in the same way—none of Sproul’s “rogue molecules”—would God have gotten bored of it, in similar fashion, when molecules only do as programmed? Such mediocrity seems beneath God, and I can’t imagine that Jesus would have gone to the Cross for talking dolls. For real people? That might be a different matter.
If God had exhaustively decreed all things, including having decreed the Fall of man and rendered it certain, and which also included the totally depravity of every human’s sin-nature to thus exclude all from the hope of eternal life except those whom are elected to receive an Irresistible Grace, then the result would be the common criticism against Calvinism that the human race is made up of puppets and robots for divine gratification. The other issue is whether creating a race of marionettes would be too far beneath the integrity and character of an all-wise, all-knowing and all-powerful God. Moreover, such a scenario may also deprive God of genuine relationships and genuine love, if God is simply loving Himself through human puppets. So the essence of this particular criticism against Calvinism is that it would demean God with the mediocrity of being a Puppet Master. In contrast, it certainly would require an all-wise, all-knowing and all-powerful God to providentially govern the human race which was created without strings.
As an example of the negative implication of being a Puppet Master, consider the rebellion of Israel against Samuel, when the people demanded to have a king just like the other pagan nations: “Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah; and they said to him, ‘Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.’ But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day—in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also’” (1st Samuel 8:4-8). So if God, according to Calvinism, had decreed whatsoever comes to pass, including every thought, word and deed, then it would seem that the people of Israel are being used as sock-puppets to say: “Now appoint a king for us,” while Samuel is being used as a sock-puppet to express disappointment, with the result that God concludes, in this scenario, “They have forsaken Me.” The teaching that people have free-will would restore the integrity of God so that He is not shown to be a Puppet Master.
Billy Graham: “God created man in His own image and gave him an abundant life. He did not make him as a robot to automatically love and obey Him, but gave him a will and freedom of choice. Man chose to disobey God and go his own willful way. Man still makes this choice today. This results in separation from God.”476
Hal Lindsey: “So God did this because He did not want to create robots. You see, He wanted a creature that could respond to Him. But, most of all, He wanted a creature that could respond to His love. Now, there cannot be love without freedom of choice. Unless you can choose not to love, you can’t love.”477
Dave Hunt: “Surely love is the most important and most thrilling subject of all–and nothing is so beautiful as God’s love manifest in Jesus Christ. Tragically, Calvinism robs us of what ought to be ‘the greatest story ever told.’ It reduces God’s love to a form of favoritism without passion, and it denies man the capacity of responding from his heart, thereby robbing God of the joy of a genuine response from man and the glory it alone can bring.”478
Dave Hunt: “The entire history of mankind becomes a puppet show, with God the puppeteer. He looked down upon men and saw that ‘the wickedness of man was great…Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…. The earth also was corrupt…and…filled with violence’ (Genesis 6:5, 11). This situation ‘grieved [God] at his heart.’ But, if as Calvinism says, God caused every evil thought, word, and deed, why was He grieved? And how could God be grieved if He could have caused those living in Noah’s day to be saints rather than sinners but instead chose to damn them? Yet God is love?”479
Dave Hunt: “Calvinism treats man as a puppet that God makes willing, yet the Bible gives man credit for having a willing heart as though the willingness were his own. The judgment seat of Christ, His promised rewards, the Great White Throne judgment, and the lake of fire are meaningless if all is of God and nothing is from the heart of man. The many statements about the person being willing from his heart become nonsensical.”480
Calvinist objection:
In Heaven, the saints are not free to sin. They do not have free-will in that sense. God gives them a nature whereby they have no desire for sin, but instead to only love God and worship Him forever. So if we were to say that “since God determines the regenerated nature of the elect on earth, that that makes them puppets or robots,” then by the same force of logic, we would have to say that those in Heaven are puppets and robots, too—a claim Arminians would certainly reject. So just because God determines people’s nature, does not make them robots.
Our reply:
The new nature that the saints receive in Heaven, which is not to desire sin but only to love and worship God, is as an outworking of their prior choice on earth, in which, while on earth, they freely chose to receive God’s offer of forgiveness and eternal life, so that God would give them the sinless nature that they one day receive in Heaven. The Monergism of Calvinism cannot say that. So to compare the situation in Heaven between the Calvinist and non-Calvinist paradigms is an apples to oranges comparison. There is a significant dissimilarity which eliminates Calvinists from making such a comparison with non-Calvinist theology.
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476 The Enduring Classics of Billy Graham: The Secret of Happiness (Nashville, Tennessee: W Publishing Group, 2002), 125-126.
477 Hal Lindsey, The Gospel of John. http://www.hallindsey.com/store/gospel-of-john-cd-series/56/
478 Debating Calvinism (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2004), 255.
479 Ibid., 314.
480 Ibid., 339.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
