Dealing With Objections In Point 3

A very common objection:

3. I reject covenant theology because when understood and taken to its logical conclusion, it disparages the character of God as revealed in Scripture. It logically makes Him the author of sin. It also makes Him capricious in that He chose winners and losers before the foundation of the world based on whim. In other words, He chose to affirmatively damn billions of souls before he ever created them. That kind of picture of my Lord is a gross caricature of Him. Therefore, I find hyper-Calvinism to be gross error at best. In my opinion, it is merely pagan fatalism dressed up in Christian garb. It makes Jehovah/Yahweh no different than Allah, the Greek and Roman gods, the Norse gods, etc.

This is my favorite part of the e-mail. Some of you may be thinking, “Wow! The Reformed view of the bible is just horrible.” I suppose I ought to go bury my head in shame. I would too, if any part of it was even remotely an accurate description of Calvinism or Reformed theology. I see this objection so often I wonder if it has been copied and pasted in the minds of many Baptists today via the Internet by the likes of Dave Hunt. Since there is so much being said that is not being said (simply assumed), I will attempt to interact with this portion over some time.

The first point is that Covenant Theology is accused of disparaging the character of God by making God the Author of sin. I’d like to know how God is not the Author of everything in some sense. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology describes it this way:

“The analogy of an author writing a play may help us to grasp how both aspects can be true [God’s Providence and man’s will]. In the Shakespearean play Macbeth, the character Macbeth murders King Duncan. Now (if we assume for a moment that this a fictional account), the question may be asked, “Who killed King Duncan?” On one level, the correct answer is “Macbeth.” Within the context of the play he carried out the murder and is rightly to be blame for it. But on another level, a correct answer to the question, “Who killed Duncan?” would be “William Shakespeare”: he wrote the play, he created all the characters in it, and he wrote the part where Macbeth killed King Duncan.”

So I must ask, if God does not have a positive decree by which everything is determined by His own council, then what determines history? Impersonal chance? The pagan gods? The creation itself? Perhaps Man is the ultimate in Dispensational theology? Is life just God winding creation like a top and letting it go to see what happens? If this is the case, then God’s decisions in our world are total reactionary. His decisions must always be based on the creature and never His own sovereign purposes. What am I to conclude by the above point number 3? Does this not pave the way for Open-Theism?

This only leaves the Christian wondering why all things work to the Glory of God. If He didn’t decree it, if everything just happens by its own autonomous free-will, how is God glorified? If my wife is raped and murdered, what is the purpose? If my brother loses three babies prior to their birth, what is their purpose? When a bug squashes upon my windshield, what is its purpose? Dispensationalists claim their theology is all about glorifying God. How is this the case?

Let’s go to the Bible and look Acts 4:24-28:

And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is You who MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA, AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, 'WHY DID THE GENTILES RAGE, AND THE PEOPLES DEVISE FUTILE THINGS? 'THE KINGS OF THE EARTH TOOK THEIR STAND, AND THE RULERS WERE GATHERED TOGETHER AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST HIS CHRIST.'
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

Was Jesus’ death on the cross a sin? Were the men, who crucified Christ, sinning when they did so? Did God decree this event? If God was the Author of this major historical event, is God the Author of sin? There is simply no way of consistently explaining this text outside of Reformed theology. Hopefully we will not resort to saying that God simply looked down the corridor of time and saw that the Cross would happen. This may be the Bible Answer Man’s explanation (a national radio program), but it is not Biblical.

So I leave a challenge to those who think Reformed theology disparages God’s character by making Him the author of sin. Please exegete the specific text where that is stated. Then explain 3 texts. Genesis 50:20, Isaiah 10 and Act 4 (see above).