The Sovereignty of God Does Not Negate His Love - Or, Why I'm A Calvinist

I’ve been to a variety of churches in my lifetime – Methodist, Southern Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Non-denom with Pentecostal leanings, Non-denom with Presbyterian (Reformed) leanings. Some I’ve left because of a family move, others because in my spiritual walk I had outgrown or come to disagree with the theology. In addition to being churched all my life, I also attended a Christian high school that required Bible theology and biblical history courses. Currently I attend a Methodist church after having moved halfway across the country; most recently having attended the Non-denom with Presbyterian leanings (although last I heard they had joined the Southern Baptist Association). Naturally, with this variation in churches, there has been variation in theological teaching, which is mostly well and good. There are some things that just aren’t stated explicitly in the Bible, to God’s glory as we continually search to be understand him better. It was inevitable that eventually I would hear a sermon I disagreed with, as many of us do in our lifetimes, especially going from a Reformed church to a Non-Reformed. That is to say, the United Methodist Church was founded under the Arminian beliefs of John Wesley.

I knew the church I am attending would disagree with me on that, as I count myself a Calvinist. But, as this particular sermon progressed, I found the Calvinistic view was misrepresented to the congregation. Bias I was expecting – if I were to write a sermon discussing the Sovereignty of God vs the Love of God, I would be biased towards the Calvinist belief. I have no problem with bias. However, I was twitching in my seat as I heard the teachings of John Calvin oversimplified and glossed over (as I might be accused of doing to the Arminian teaching, let’s be honest). So I would like to shift the focus from the debate itself and instead present Calvinism in more detail so that the belief might be better understood. The Sovereignty and Transcendence of God does not negate the Love and Intimacy God provides for us.

For context, let’s take a brief overview of the Calvinism vs Arminianism debate. Many people I know are familiar with the term Calvinism, while Arminianism is heard less frequently but perhaps more widely taught. In extremely and overly simplified terms of both beliefs, the debate could be called Predestination vs Free Will: the idea that God chooses whom he will save ahead of time vs the idea that it is the individual that chooses whether or not they will be saved. These two views exist on the same plane in a scale: one can be extremely Calvinistic and say that no matter how hard an individual tries, they cannot hope to get into heaven unless God wills it, and therefore the thing to do is to pray for deliverance from hell instead of a heart change (this view caused many of the societal problems discussed in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter). On the far other end of the scale, an extreme Arminianist might believe that God doesn’t know everything and simply reacts to how humans shape things, rather than being in control of them himself. There are dangers on both ends of the spectrum, but fortunately most Christians fall somewhere in between. For example, I had a youth leader who, when asked, said he was both Arminian and Calvinist – he believed that we got the choice, but God already knew the choice ahead of time and had planned for it already. My mother’s favorite way of explaining her beliefs is that God is like the director of a play – he controls the script and the actions, but gives the actors the choice on how to play their parts (this may seem insignificant, but anyone familiar with the Theatre knows that just one single actor delivering their lines from one performance to another can change an entire show).

The key word to Calvinism is predestination. This concept can be found in Romans 8, specifically verses 28-30. Many people are familiar with 8:28, as it is often printed on sympathy cards, graduation presents, coffee mugs, and various other paraphernalia. Rarely is it followed by the succeeding verses, which are harder to swallow than all things working out in our favor. The English Standard Version of the Bible reads: 

“28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

The New International Version, the King James Version, and the Catholic Public Domain Version all use the term “predestined” or a variant such as “predestinated”. Even translations of the Bible that don’t use the word explicitly, such as the New Living Translation, state that “God knew his people in advance” (NLT) or in The Message “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning” (MSG).

Predestination can be a frightening concept. People don’t like to think that they aren’t in control of their own lives or their own faith. But believing in predestination is so much more than saying that we don’t get a choice in the matter. It is but a facet of God’s omnipotent sovereignty, which is central to the Bible and also central to Calvin’s teaching. Of course we know that God is powerful enough to have created the entire universe and all that is in it, which shows his omnipotence. But he didn’t stop there – he continued and continues to rule his creation, which is his sovereignty.

We see in the Psalms “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (115:3) and God is actively involved with his creation (104:27-30). In the book of Job, God not only has authority over whether or not Satan is allowed to inflict suffering on Job, but gives specific limitations as to where the infliction is to end (Job 1:8-12, 2:3-6). God has not only created the universe, but continues to be involved with every tiny aspect of it, down to the “birds of the air” (Matthew 6:26) and the very number of hairs on a person’s head (Matthew 10:30). Not only is God sovereign over all creation, but he is active and involved with its operation.

To John Calvin, predestination naturally follows God’s omnipotence and sovereignty. He rejected the deistic idea that God created the world and then stood back and let it spin without him. Instead, in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, he states that 

“After learning that there is a Creator, it must forthwith infer that he is also a Governor and Preserver, and that, not by producing a kind of general motion in the machine of the globe as well as in each of its parts, but by a special providence sustaining, cherishing, superintending, all the things which he has made, to the very minutest, even to a sparrow” (Book 1 Chap. 16 Sec. 1). 

How could a God who lovingly created the universe not be involved in its every aspect? Calvin quotes Acts 17:28, “In him we live and move and have our being,” and Job says that “In his hands is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind,” (Job 12:10). This act of God in determining every aspect of creation is called his Providence.

Calvin maintained that if one believed God is omnipotent and omniscient, one must believe that he has therefore planned ahead and decided whom he shall save. Further, Calvin wrote that, while man has a drive to do good and God has gifted humans with reason an intelligence (Book 2 Chap. 1 Sec. 1), humans cannot pursue ultimate good – God’s glory – on their own.

We often hear (in church or otherwise) of the original sin that caused Adam, Eve, and subsequently the entire human race to fall. John Calvin rejected the idea that this first sin of mankind was more than simple “sensual intemperance” or seeking to please oneself by giving into temptation. Instead, he discusses this sin as being completely heinous. It’s not that Adam was given one single tree of fruit and told not to eat of it, like putting a candy bar in front of a child and telling them to resist. Genesis tells us that the garden was full of many trees – in fact Eden was full of “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (2:9). God provided as much food as they could want and even immortality in exchange for one simple command to obey – to not touch the tree of the knowledge of good an evil. God asked for obedience, trust in his wisdom, and submission to his command.

But, Calvin says, in his divine Providence, God created man with the free will to choose whether or not to obey. When Adam rejected God’s command, it was an act that “withdrew authority from the Maker,” was “foul insult to God,” “monstrous impiety,” and even a crime to shake off the allegiance of God.

“Never would Adam have dared to show any repugnance to the command of God if he had not been incredulous as to his word. The strongest curb to keep all his affections under due restraint, would have been the belief that nothing was better than to cultivate righteousness by obeying the commands of God, and that the highest possible felicity was to be loved by him. Man, therefore, when carried away by the blasphemies of Satan, did his very utmost to annihilate the whole glory of God.” (Book 2 Chap. 2 Sec. 4)

Adam’s sin was not that he and Eve sought to please only themselves like petulant children; the sin was believing in their own wisdom over that of God their Creator, and in doing so they destroyed their own souls.

After a sin so heinous, it is no surprise that the whole of creation was corrupted. Anyone who has been in a church for any length of time is probably familiar with Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Even non-Christians use the phrase “no one is perfect” – it is universally acknowledged that something is wrong with humans. Humans cannot be perfect. All have sinned. Romans 5:12 tells us that “sin came into the world through one man, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”. John Calvin, drawing from the teachings of St. Augustine, states that “we are not corrupted by acquired wickedness, but bring an innate corruption from the very womb” (Book 2 Chap. 2 Sec. 5) and thus all carry original sin. While we were created with Free Will, how can such depraved and sinful creatures even contemplate turning to God, after proudly despising his wisdom for our own? All are guilty of spurning the command of God, of annihilating his glory. Job laments “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one” (Job 14:4).

Only in Christ can a person make the choice to become clean again. It is Christ who determines what will be brought high and what will be despised in the world “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:29). Calvin argued that the idea of choosing righteousness for ourselves in our own strength is “leaning on a reed which immediately gives way” (Book 2 Chap. 2 Sec. 1). He draws from Jesus in John 12, who quotes  Isaiah in verse 40, “Therefore they could not believe…He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them” (John 12:39-40). It’s uncomfortable to think about: the will of God determining who is saved and who is not, rather than humans’ own power. “For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience they many will be made righteous…so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:19, 21).

The idea that human beings have no control over their own salvation is a frightening one, and it is understandable that many reject this idea. In fact, one misconception of Calvinism is that one might pray and seek God earnestly, and still not be admitted in God’s Kingdom if God doesn’t allow it, which is frankly terrifying. This is not what Calvin teaches. Rather, he argues, Faith in God is a gift itself from the Holy Spirit (Book 3 Chap. 2 Sec. 1), and each Christian is gifted with a measure of faith “God keeps us modest…that every teacher, however excellent, may still be disposed to learn” (Book 3 Chap. 2 Sec. 4). “Christ confers upon us, and we obtain by faith, both free reconciliation and newness of life” (Book 3 Chap. 3 Sec. 1).

God is omnipotent and sovereign, but that does not mean that he does not love his creation. In fact, how much more loving is he who, after we rejected him from birth, makes it possible for us to come to him and gives us salvation? And not only does God make salvation possible, he sent his son, part of himself, to live among us and be completely holy and die the brutal death of a criminal so that we could be saved - not only from sin and the devil, but from our own corrupt nature.

Still, Calvinism often stirs up questions. Many would ask “If God has selected beforehand those who are going to be saved, what is the point of missions and the Great Commission? What is the point of proselytizing?” Calvin answers that question in the first book of his Institutes, using the sun as an example (Book 1 Chap. 16 Sec. 2). The sun is the tool which God uses to light the earth. It is not necessary for the lighting of the earth, as light was created before the sun (Genesis 1:3 – the first day. The sun was not created until verse 14, the fourth day), and God could have lit the earth just fine without it. He continues to control it, as we see in Joshua 10. In the same way, God has chosen to use us, his Christians, to accomplish his mission on the earth to his glory, though he has no need of us. How much love he must have for us, to not only choose to save those who have rejected him, but also to do his work in the earth?

So, God’s sovereignty and omnipotence is just as much a part of his nature as his love. In fact, considering his omnipotence and sovereignty, is not his love that much more powerful?

But let us not forget that one’s stance on Calvinism does not determine salvation. Did I disagree with the sermon? Yes. Did I believe that Calvinism was misrepresented in a way that was accidentally misleading? Yes. Will I stop going to that church? No I will not. Because, while my opinion and the opinion of the church leadership might be different, I still know in my heart that this church is where God wants me to be. They are incredibly active in their community through many different outlets, and truly have a heart for bringing the message of the gospel to all that they encounter. They are intelligent and learned, and there is much I can continue to learn, even if I disagree sometimes. Who am I to say that I am perfect in my faith?

I think it says a lot about the pastor that, after the above sermon, when I went up to speak to him, he immediately went, “I knew you would have something to say.” And we laughed :)

All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

Throughout this post I have cited The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin, published first in 1536. Translated by Henry Beveridge, published in 1845.
 A SUPER HELPFUL RESOURCE FOR ALL THINGS THEOLOGY is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at ccel.org, where this text and many others written by church leaders of all sorts of denominations may be accessed and downloaded for free!