Charge: Calvinism distorts God’s Permission
Arminian Complaint: Calvinism distorts God’s Permission
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians summarizes Calvinism: “God did not ‘permit’ anything; God insisted. It was his design for man to sin. Can God choose to save before time – not able to know the good or bad choice, then hedge His bet or allow them to do evil? God determined to ‘save’ and knew the individual personally before sin was foreknown (before they did anything good or bad). This begs the question. Then what did God ‘choose’ to save them from?” (SEA)
Another member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians explains: “Omnicausality certainly is fraught with problems. Hence, like you point out, words like permit, allow, concur, etc., have no room in the language and theology of the consistent Calvinist.” (SEA)
Moderate Calvinists often wish to invoke the Permissive Will of God in order to explain tragic events. Even in terms of sin, Moderate Calvinists insist that God did not have to work sin in the life of Lucifer or the fallen angels, or of fallen man, and that sin was “already there.” But these same Calvinists will admit their belief that God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, even from before the foundation of the world. So if God has decreed the action, then by necessity, He has decreed the thoughts that drive the actions. So it cannot be a matter of what is already there, but of what is meticulously decreed. There doesn’t seem to be a logical basis for a Permissive Will within the Calvinist system of all things decreed, and it’s not just the Arminians who notice this, but John Calvin as well:
John Calvin writes: “When he uses the term permission, he means that the will of God is the supreme and primary cause of everything, because nothing happens without his order or permission. He certainly does not picture God sitting idly in a watch-tower, allowing anything to happen. The will which he represents as intervening is active, and could not otherwise be regarded as a cause.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 8, emphasis mine)
John Calvin states: “From other passages, in which God is said to draw or bend Satan himself, and all the reprobate, to his will, a more difficult question arises. For the carnal mind can scarcely comprehend how, when acting by their means, he contracts no taint from their impurity, nay, how, in a common operation, he is exempt from all guilt, and can justly condemn his own ministers. Hence a distinction has been invented between doing and permitting because to many it seemed altogether inexplicable how Satan and all the wicked are so under the hand and authority of God, that he directs their malice to whatever end he pleases, and employs their iniquities to execute his Judgments. The modesty of those who are thus alarmed at the appearance of absurdity might perhaps be excused, did they not endeavour to vindicate the justice of God from every semblance of stigma by defending an untruth. It seems absurd that man should be blinded by the will and command of God, and yet be forthwith punished for his blindness. Hence, recourse is had to the evasion that this is done only by the permission, and not also by the will of God. He himself, however, openly declaring that he does this, repudiates the evasion. That men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction, is proved by numberless clear passages of Scripture.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 18, section 1, emphasis mine)
John Calvin states: “They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God, who is declared in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases, could have made the noblest of his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in accordance with free-will, he was to be the architect of his own fortune, that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to his desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which every thing depends, he rules over all?” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 7, emphasis mine)
John Calvin states: “Here they recur to the distinction between will and permission, the object being to prove that the wicked perish only by the permission, but not by the will of God. But why do we say that he permits, but just because he wills? Nor, indeed, is there any probability in the thing itself—viz. that man brought death upon himself merely by the permission, and not by the ordination of God; as if God had not determined what he wished the condition of the chief of his creatures to be.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 8, emphasis mine)
Calvin writes: “But it is quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.176, emphasis mine)
The Calvinistic, Westminster Confession of Faith, states: “The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.” (Of Providence, emphasis mine)
Calvinist, R.C. Sproul, explains: “If He decides to allow something, then in a sense he is foreordaining it.” (Chosen By God, p.26, emphasis mine)
Calvinist, Erwin Lutzer, similarly argues: “Both Calvinists and Arminians teach that God does not and cannot do evil. Calvinists say that God nonetheless ordains it through secondary causes. Arminians say God only permits it. Nonetheless, his permission necessarily means that he bore ultimate responsibility for it. After all, he could have chosen ‘not to permit it.’” (The Doctrines that Divide, pp.209-210, emphasis mine)
Ken Keathley explains: “Permission is problematic for the Calvinist--particularly to those who hold to determinism--because permission entails conditionality, contingency, and viewing humans as in some sense the origin of their own respective choices.” (A Southern Baptist Dialogue: Calvinism, p.197, emphasis mine)
An all-encompassing decree, in which all things, including the Fall of Man, are predetermined, scripted and otherwise authored by God, leaves no logic basis for permission, and such Calvinists who invoke it, are simply engaging in double-talk.
In other words, God permits nothing. Everything that is, is willed from above, and secretly happens by precise design. Otherwise, God is not “omnipotent.”
Can you imagine J.R.R. Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, stating concerning his book, that he “permitted” Sauron to do evil things? Sauron is just one of his fictional characters. So to say that J.R.R. Tolkien “permitted” something of his fictional characters is just absurd. Since determinism is analogous to an author writing a script, it is likewise absurd to say that a deterministic Deity could permit a non-free creature to do anything of their own, which may then be permitted.
Calvinism, which teaches determinism, cannot account for any real sense of permission, and if the concept of permission is indeed biblical, then the result is that deterministic Calvinism must be unbiblical.
In other words, what God permits, He causes, because He could have otherwise chosen to halt it. The problem is that Calvinism teaches that God predetermines all things, as if writing a script or a screen-play. So there is no such thing as permission, in such a world-vew.
