Revelation 20:12
Revelation 20:11-15
“Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
The idea that they were judged according to their deeds, suggests that they determined their own actions, as in self-determination, for which judgment ensues for wrongly committed actions. But what if, according to Calvinism, that God determined every thought that they would ever have, and determined every deed that they would ever commit, from cradle to grave? How, then, would they be worthy of punishment for deeds committed from every conscious moment of their existence, which were irresistibly and unilaterally decided for them by another Being, which according to Calvinism, was vitally necessary in order for God to tell His story through mankind, and which ultimately works toward the aim of displaying God’s various attributes? These would be the collateral damage of Determinism, and would inescapably place all of their deeds at the hand of divine causation. Calvinists tend to waffle on these issues, because they are trying to straddle Determinism and Free Will, in maintaining a doctrine of Compatibilism. Here is an example of a Calvinist asserting the Deterministic aspect:
John Calvin: “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? But whether they will allow it or not, predestination is manifest in Adam’s posterity. It was not owing to nature that they all lost salvation by the fault of one parent. Why should they refuse to admit with regard to one man that which against their will they admit with regard to the whole human race? Why should they in caviling lose their labour? Scripture proclaims that all were, in the person of one, made liable to eternal death. As this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is plain that it is owing to the wonderful counsel of God. It is very absurd in these worthy defenders of the justice of God to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is, dreadful; and yet it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he had so ordained by his decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd when I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at his own pleasure arranged it.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, section 7, emphasis mine)
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “If God determined everything, why would He judge people according to ‘their deeds’? Wouldn’t He actually have to judge Himself, according to His decree for men to sin, and not judge sinners at all or punish them for their sin? If God Himself is responsible in decreeing all actions, good or bad, then judging people, in any sense, is unnecessary. I think John Calvin had revelations outside the complete canon in order to come to this deterministic and fatalistic conclusion.”
If Determinism is true, then their deeds are actually God’s deeds, and Calvinists try to deflect the impact of the criticism by arguing that while man has a bad motive, God has a good motive. But the obvious problem with that is that Calvinism also teaches that God predetermines every thought, throughout all eternity, without which, He could not maintain omniscience over it. So Calvinists are often found trying to straddle the fence on Determinism and Free Will, and logic simply gets in the way. Many Calvinists will simply appeal to mystery, but biblical mystery always awaits revelation, whereas Compatibilism has never had revelation, but is instead deadlocked in hopeless contradiction. For instance, 1+1=3 is not a mystery that awaits revelation, but rather is simply false. Reconciling Determinism and Free Will with a doctrine of Compatibilism suffers from the same problem. It simply cannot be reconciled because it is false. Calvinists will argue that it appears in Scripture, but the reality is that it must include presumptions.
