When All Means "Some"

When all means "some."

Ever get tired of these statements and those like it?:

1. All means all!

2. Calvinists emphasize the particular over the general.

3. World means world!

4. Calvinists are notorious for making all mean some.

By way of reply, generally, I find these sort of objections rather low brow anyway, but I'd like to draw your attention to a particular statement made this past Monday by Robert:

Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.

Really?

The author of Proverbs declares that, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Prov. 16:33).

“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Ps. 115:3).

God said to Isaiah that “From the east I summon a bird of prey. . . to fulfill my purpose” (46:11) showing that even birds are controlled by him.

Jesus said that “not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” (Mt. 10:29), meaning that something even as insignificant as the death of a sparrow is predetermined by God.

God is even the ultimate cause of calamity and disaster. He interrogated Moses from the burning bush, “Who makes [a man] deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Ex. 4:11). As God shapes a child in its mother’s womb, he forms some with physical and mental disabilities, and others he makes healthy. He is free to do with us as he chooses, since we are merely clay in his hands (Rom. 9:21). And only the impious would dare challenge his authority by quipping, “why did you make me like this?” (Rom. 9:20). Earthquakes, famine, pestilence and storm all befall a city because of God. Amos asked the rhetorical question, “When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?” (Am. 3:6).

Does an offer of choice imply the freedom and ability to choose contracausally, that is does command to do a thing prove the ability to do it? E.g. God would not command us to do what we cannot do? Frequently Arminians will appeal to Deuteronomy where Moses says, "choose life in order that you may live,..." to say that this proves men must have contracausal freedom, but Moses said that the reason the Israelites were a stiff-necked people who refused to stop sinning was because, “to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear” (Deut. 29:4). The answer is, "No," nothing can be deduced about ability from such statements.

“I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isa. 45:7). The darkness of night and plague is from God. And the wealth and peace of the nations is in his hands. It is easy to suppose that men are somehow exempt from the sphere of God’s sovereign control. But this is not the case. If Isaiah can say that God controls birds, it is just as certain that he controls men: “From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose” (Isa. 46:11).

Proverbs 21 declares, "The heart of the king is like channels of water in the hands of the Lord, He turns it wherever He wishes." God even causes a man to say every word that comes from his mouth: “from the Lord comes the reply of [a person’s] tongue” (Prov. 16:1). And the Lord ordains every course of action a man takes for Scripture says, “the Lord determines [a man’s] steps” (Prov. 16:9). David said, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Ps. 139:16).

Proverbs declares, “The Lord works out everything for his own ends – even the wicked for a day of disaster” (Prov. 16:4). Paul asserts, like Isaiah, that, “God has bound all men over to disobedience” (Rom. 11:32). This teaching pervades all of Scripture. The Psalmist declared, “The Lord made his people very fruitful; he made them too numerous for their foes, whose hearts he turned to hate his people, to conspire against his servants” (Ps. 105:24-25).We could go on and on and on with these declarations in Scripture.

Isaiah 46:10

Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, 'My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'

Ephesians 1:11

11also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,

And especially here in Ephesian 1, talking about predestination and planning, we have not a reference to the precepts and commands of God, like the Law, what we would call the "revealed will" of God, but to His decrees, what Deut. 29:29 calls "the secret things." Also, notice the connection to Isaiah 46 in Ephesians 1, where God predestines us according to the "kind intension" (or "good pleasure) of His will.

And, as Brother Dustin Segers pointed out to us in our church several months ago, this text can be read emphatically such that God is working, literally "all all things" in such a manner.

People get hung up on the idea of "exhaustive determinism" and "decrees" and act like, as Steve has now twice pointed out and I have pointed out myself in the parent topic twice myself as well, decrees are not the same thing as "causality," and decrees don't do anything. They act as a blueprint. Blueprints don't build buildings. That requires means - materials, machines, people. In Scripture, the decrees (God's counsels) are worked out by providence. Decrees are not interchangeable with "causality." In Scripture, providence, which is usually by second causes, works out the plan. Steve put it his way:

Robert is confusing *causality* with *certainty*.

I'd add that this seems to be regular feature of libertarians' objections to Calvinism's view of providence.

Further, it's not as if Arminians haven't themselves said that God decrees things like the Fall. Read the Arminian order of decrees: Here are the first two: Creation...Permit Fall. Any Calvinist that has any clue about the Amyraldian, Infralapsarian, and Supralapsarian schemes knows that they also have God permitting the Fall. The difference between the Arminian scheme and the others is that the Arminian is speaking of "bare" permission. Put another way God decreed the "possibility" of the Fall. This reflects the Arminian (pre)commitment to indeterminism. The others have the decree as "efficacious," and the main dispute between Supras of the older variety and Infras has to do with the way God discriminates among men - not the nature of the permission of the Fall.

Another Scholastic distinction that I believe Charles Hodge used, even though we admit is has been discussed to death and fraught with difficulties since the Middle Ages, is the distinction between God's absolute power (Potentia Absoluta) and ordinary power (Potentia Ordinata). Whatever the difficulties of those distinctions in the older theologies (See Richard Muller's discussions in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - it's too long to enter for my purposes here), I think they are useful, at their root, insofar as they help accurately describe the way God uses means. With respect to things like creation ex nihilio, miracles, the Incarnation, regeneration, etc. God's absolute and direct control is very involved. In all other things, the decrees fall out according to the nature of second causes "either necessarily, freely, or contingently."

Notice that even in the creation narrative, we have an implication of second causes. There are commands that say, "Let there be..." and others that say ,"Let the earth bring forth..." In the Incarnation, we have a direct miracle @ conception, but it isn't as if Jesus just appears full formed as a 30 year old man like some sort of animus springing from Mary's womb. Rather, there is a normal pregnancy; He grows through childhood into adulthood, etc. We speak of regeneration in two senses: the wider and the narrower. In the narrower, we mean the direct act of God raising the soul dead in sin to life, but we are comfortable pointing out that "means" are the ordinary mode of that occurrence. As Dr. Sproul has said, the Spirit and the Word of God (preaching, studying, reading, etc) are working together.

What I would like to particularly point out for the purposes of this posting is that what Robert has provided us with is his own use of one of his Libertarian objections to Calvinism where it suits him:

Scripture is clear that He does predetermine some events, most notably the crucifixion of Jesus Acts 2:23, 4:25-28), but not all events.

Notice how quickly the libertarian's "all means all" argumentation quickly turns into, "all means some." "God works all things after the counsel of His will" (in Greek, literally "all, all things)" is reduced, without benefit of argument, to "some things."

Here's Robert's schizophrenic logic: he'll take the "pantos" passages of Scripture regarding the atonement or God's desires (1 Tim 2:4 for example) to mean "everyone without exception" and then reduce "all things" to "some." All the while, he finds the doctrine of particular atonement odious, because we're turning "all" and "world" into "some."

Robert believes that God only predetermines *some things* but when we look at Scripture, we find that the list is quite exhaustive (indeed the above list can be multiplied greatly) and Robert, while accusing us of emphasizing the particular over the general and claiming, I suppose, that "all means all," quickly reduces "all," as in Ephesians 1 to "some." Robert needs a supporting argument that these declarations above are all exceptions and that the salvation of men lies not in the predestination of God but in man's libertarian freedom. He needs an exegetical argument to that effect, but, as we have seen many times, he falls strangely silent when pressed on that matter.

What is truly annoying in that regard is that he has also stated this:

You prove my point, you can argue for it, but you do not have the verses to show it to be true. Since you do not have the texts, you like Owen, must construct logical arguments to substitute for biblical texts.

I believe he has said this at least twice. What does Robert offer for an exegetical argument? Looking here and here and, I think, here we find precious little. What we do find is that all the while crying about Owen's supposed lack of exegetical foundation and substitution of 'logical arguments' for exegetical ones - and Manata (and I imagine the rest of us who have replied to him as well) following in Owen's footsteps, Robert has consistently offered ethical and philosophical arguments and analogies (for that's what libertarian freedom is - a philosophical argument) -not an exegetical argument - and he has the nerve to talk about alleged "double standards" of the authors of this blog?! I don't think so. What we have here is a classic example of projection.

Robert, please give us the exegetical foundation of your view of indeterminate freedom. I'd like to know, because Arminians freely admit this is not an exegetical argument.

I'm reminded of what a friend of mine who once taught at SWBTS (and is now pastoring in NC) once said to me: "In the end, there are really no exegetical arguments against the doctrines of grace, only ethical and philosophical ones." Regardless of the broader merits of his statement, if Robert is an example, Dr. Minor was on the mark.