Proverbs 15:26
Proverbs 15:26 (see also Jeremiah 32:35)
Evil plans are an abomination to the LORD, but pleasant words are pure.
Question: Why would God inspire man, and even form the will within man, to want to make “evil plans,” if such plans are an “abomination” to Him?
Answer: John Calvin called it a “paradox.”
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “This must mean that God hates His own plans.”
John Calvin: “We also note that we should consider the creation of the world so that we may realize that everything is subject to God and ruled by his will and that when the world has done what it may, nothing happens other than what God decrees.” (Acts: Calvin, The Crossway Classic Commentaries, p.66, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “First, the eternal predestination of God, by which before the fall of Adam He decreed what should take place concerning the whole human race and every individual, was fixed and determined.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.121, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “Whatever things are done wrongly and unjustly by man, these very things are the right and just works of God. This may seem paradoxical at first sight to some; but at least they should notbe so offended that they will not suffer me to search the word of God for a little to find out what should be thought here. But lest we should look with pride and stubbornness, as if it were proper for God to fit Himself to our standards, we must first listen to Scripture, where the whole definition of the works of God is to be found.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.169, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “What necessarily happens is what God decrees, and is therefore not exactly or of itself necessary by nature.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, p.170, emphasis mine)
John Calvin: “But where it is a matter of men’s counsels, wills, endeavours, and exertions, there is greater difficulty in seeing how the providence of God rules here too, so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.171-172, emphasis mine)
In trying to balance God’s, alleged, all-encompassing decrees and the authorship of evil, John Calvin professed “ignorance” and appealed to mystery.
John Calvin: “But now, removing from God all proximate causation of the act, I at the same time remove from Him all guilt and leave man alone liable. It is therefore wicked and calumnious to say that I make the fall of man one of the works of God. But how it was ordained by the foreknowledge and decree of God what man’s future was without God being implicated as associate in the fault as the author or approver of transgression, is clearly a secret so much excelling the insight of the human mind, that I am not ashamed to confess ignorance.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.123-124, emphasis mine)
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “So, we do those things which God has willed for us to do, given that He forms our wills and decisions and choices and options - not that the options are real, mind you. If God genuinely abhors the plans of the wicked, the very plans which Calvinists insist that God has willed for the wicked to perform, then God is such a conflicted Being.”
As an example, concerning Job, how would God say to Satan, “you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause” (Job 2:3), if it was actually God who inspired Satan to make the challenge? If Calvinism was true, what would stop Satan from asking why God inspired him?
