First, on a personal level, I can assure you that a love for the sovereignty of God in all things (including evil) does not result in “encouraging Christians to perpetrate violence and suffering against those who are seen to deserve it.” But I know you want to know why, so here’s my shot at offering an explanation:

The very first letter in the Calvinistic acronym, TULIP, stands for Total Depravity. In short, this means everyone of us deserves God’s wrath (Rom 3:19-20). If everyone deserves God’s wrath, including us, why would we want to “perpetrate violence … against those who … deserve it”? That would include us, too! We’re all deserving of wrath, but some are spared, graciously, and Jesus commanded us to be kind to everyone in modelling God’s kindness (Matt 5:44-45). We do believe unrepentant people are storing up wrath for themselves on the day of judgment (Romans 2:5), but that day isn’t today, and Christians are commanded not to be the perpetrators of this wrath but to leave vengeance to the Lord (Rom 12:19).

When Eph 5:1 says, “Be imitators of God”, it’s referring to something very specific about God we are to be imitators of. The verse directly before it says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” It is calling us to be imitators of God’s forgiveness and undeserved kindness.

We believe that the only way we can have hope is because we have a sovereign God. In fact, you can’t have the cross if God isn’t sovereign. Isaiah 53 says, “It was the will of the Lord to crush him.” And Peter said that Pilate, Herod, the Jews, and the Romans “gathered together against your holy servant Jesus … to do whatever your [God's] hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28). What was more evil than the murder of Jesus? But God planned it so that we might be saved. This is our only hope.

So having said that, I would also say to wrestle with scripture that does teach God is sovereign over evil and calamity (Gen 50:20; Ex 4:21; Amos 3:6; Job 1:21,2:10; Acts 2:23; Rom 8:20; 1 Pet 4:12-19; Matt 10:29; Judges 14:4; Prov 21:1). It’s all over the bible. So wrestle with it. I didn’t become a Calvinist primarily because it made the most sense to me at the time (although, as time has gone on, God has graciously made these things make sense to me now); I became a Calvinist because it’s what scripture teaches.

If you want to talk about this more, the best way to reach me I guess is to leave a comment on my blog (hisfatherlyhand.com), and I’ll shoot you an email.

May God’s name be made great in the world, and may be be gracious and merciful to you,
Nathan

I am an aging borderline Baptist, who was led to Lord Jesus in my teens by a staunch Arminian Dad, and who believes himself to have been rescued (perhaps even redeemed) suprisingly, divinely, and graciously from a very long period of very culpable apostasy and nihilism.

Several years ago I had two shocking experiences. I read my first book in Calvinist doctrine and I came across David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, the latter of which I have admired and have been grappling with ever since.

I am profoundly grateful for Hart’s numerous cutural critiques and his contributions to contemporary Christian metaphysics. His long criticism of highly deterministic views of God’s sovereignty is, I think, most clearly and powerfully expressed in a superp collection of papers published just last month in Divine Impassibilty and the Mystery of Human Suffering. Har’ts paper closely analyzes and strongly criticizes the concept of “physical premotion” that was put forward by some 16th century “classical” Thomists to grapple with the issue of divine sovereignty and human freedom.

As I am sure you all know (don’t you?), one of Hart’s main arguments over the past decade has been that much Christian theology since the Enlightenment has decayed from an inadequate understanding of God’s transcendence and its logical consequences. The basic error is that of viewing God’s uncreated being and the being that he gives creation (out of nothing) as species of the same “being”.

In this dilletante’s view, Hart’s arguments against this univocal attribution of being to God and creation are utterly compelling. As are his defense of analogia entis and his quite profound depictions of the transcendent, infinite perfections of the Trinity. I hope and pray that in the coming years many theologians, and theological students, will wrestle long and arduously with Hart’s views. (I must remind you, however, as profound as I think those views are, as far as I can tell they have not yet received much close published critique by first-rank theologians. There are a lot of Scriptural and doctrinal issues to be dealt with.)

BUT, BUT!!! As much as I appreciate Hart’s work and agree with his metaphysical arguments, I cannot agree with some of the historical judgments he voices in the later sections of this paper, and I am very troubled by the moral judgments he passes on Christians who have contributed to, or have been influenced by, the fautly metaphysical views he correctly deplores – moral judgments that unfortunately have been echoed in the comments on this post, but much more crudely.

Hart contends that “worship of this [modern all-determining] god is the first and most inexcusable nihilism, for it can have no real motives other than craven obsequiousness or sadistic delight.” Really? No other motives are possible? Or “This sort of ‘Christianity’ enjoys no conspicuous moral superiority over satanism.” Really? Is that what the contributors to this post believe about the Christians who have inherited the theologies of those “classic Thomists” and Calvinists?

Gentlemen, all I trust brothers in Christ, it is one thing to wage vigorous intellectual war against tragically and deeply flawed metaphysical, theological, and moral reasoning. And it is one thing to ardently warn of the moral and spiritual harm that could result from such reasoning. But it is quite another to categorize Christians who are the tragically mistaken perpetrators or victims of such errors as craven idol worshippers, sadists, and satanists.

Hart occasionally points out (perhaps rightly) that the metaphysical errors he criticizes are inconsistent with “revelation.” But Holy Scripture also tells us, much more clearly I think, that we only know in part and prophesy in part, that we see in a mirror dimly, and that only God can know and judge the deceitful and desperately wicked heart within each of us. And Lord Jesus himself ominously warned us about blasheming the Holy Spirit who, just think, may actually indwell a few of those who hold doctrinal views we find quite repellant.

Last Sunday I sat in the fundamentalist Baptist church in which I was rescued from apostasy, in a worship service held in honor of two members, a young, promising, devoutly Christian couple who attended Virginia Tech and were murdered. I suspect that those two young people held, and their parents hold, views about God’s sovereignty that are Calvinist to some degree. At the end of the service an elder of the church, whom I know to be strongly Calvinist, with tears in his eyes and trembling in his voice, thanked God for these young believer, prayed for their families, agonizingly asked God “why, why, why?”, but ended acknowledging that He works out all things for good. Theological error? Perhaps. Craven idol worship? Sadism? Satanism? Not hardly.

Some of John Piper’s comments sadden and trouble me but I still respect him and much of what he has written. Many of Hart’s writings inspire and stimulate me, and I have prayed that his influence will increase. But I also pray that he (and some of his other admirers) will grow out of a polemicism that sometimes seems to me rash and unloving. For I am fully convinced that some strong but humble Calvinists will enter the kingdom of heaven before some of the theological heirs of Maximus the Confessor.

Blessings.
Yours in God’s Son,
Jack Justice

Thanks for this discussion. What about Marvin’s note on Augustine? Aren’t Calvin/Edwards/Piper picking up on something in Augustine’s thought when they argue for this strong sense of sovereignty?

Piper’s statement is repugnant and self-serving (I’m still waiting for Pat Robertson, Piper or John Hagee to admit to an act of God as bringing wrath on themselves and their allies, and not on their opponents’) but regrettably, there is some warrant for it in the tradition. Augustine, you are correct, defines evil as privation, but in “On Free Will” he seems to entertain the notion that a fallen world glorifies God more than a perfect world because the former manifests God’s righteous judgment on sin whereas the latter, by definition, cannot. Also, while most scholars believe that Augustine finds no efficient cause for the Fall, only a deficient one, William Babcock reads him differently (see “City of God” XII.9).

Reconciling a loving, Almighty deity with a world shot through with sin, evil and chaos is no small task. With Piper’s God, which may owe itself to a highly selective reading of the Reformed tradition and Augustine, the almightiness takes absolute priority, so that God is good only because he is God. It’s not the best solution to the problem. In fact, it fails spectacularly; but most theodicies fail spectacularly. In the end, we should not explain or interpret evil. We should overcome it with good. Piper ought to quit writing, roll up his sleeves, and go help those people rebuild their lives.

“The supernatural, infinite god remains bound in a polar relationship with the natural, finite world. The infinite god needs the finite. Omnipotence is simply the extension of our limited creaturely power, and omniscience the extension of our limited creaturely knowledge. In every respect, the metaphysical-mythological deity is nothing more than a devout human projection in the manner of Feuerbach. It is the No-God of religion, the pious object of Babel: “In ‘believing’ on Him, we justify, enjoy, and adore ourselves””

As you know, what David is describing here is Barth’s critique of the religious liberalism that infected Christianity in the 19th Century. Makes me wonder if it would be appropriate to classify Piper as a species of the very liberalism that he undoubtedly despises… since he, in stating that God needs aspects of the finite world (evil, etc), has unwittingly bought into the “No-God of religon”?

(first post, by the way. thanks for the good work you do here.)

A good essay on this topic has been written by Paul Metzger entitled “The Halfway House of Hedonism.” It is a superb critique of John Piper that engages that very question. The article is currently available in Crux 41:5 (2005)

I should say that, unlike those in America who claim to carry on Edwards’s legacy, I find much in Edwards that is very helpful and indeed he is the greatest theologian America has produced. There certainly is much in his doctrine of hell to criticize, as you say, but by no means did I intend to dismiss him on the basis of how work attributed to him is put to use by Piper and his ilk.

As for ‘Sinners in the Hands…’ the first point is that unless you understand the then-current literary genre of ‘hands’ sermons, you can’t have any grasp of what is going on in this sermon; the second is that you should read it alongside, say, the fifteen sermons entitled ‘Heaven is a world of love’. There are criticisms to be made (I think my own published criticisms of Edwards on hell are as pointed as any in the literature) – but, frankly, ignorant condemnations based on no understanding of the genre Edwards was parodying and subverting in that sermon are simply worthless.

Thanks