On Equal Ultimacy

Both good and evil are caused by God. There is not in this world a single thing that befalls which is not in God's absolute control. God is sovereign over the elect and their way of life as he is also sovereign over the reprobate and their way of life.

Proverbs 15:3, Romans 9:15-18, God blinds the Jews - Romans 11:25, 2 Corinthians 3:14, Romans 1:24 which states that God gives people over to a wayward life, Joshua 23:14-15, and also Nabal's heart was hardened and died ten days later from hearing the news - 1 Samuel 23:37-38

The God of the Bible is sovereign over all things

Plato in the Timaeus taught that his god made order out of chaos and then he (like Zeus?) made divine children that created mortal man. In this, Plato taught that his god was not in control of all things. Bible declares however that God created the heavens and the earth. He was before all things. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness wasupon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." - Genesis 1

Not only do we have God before all things but also shaping and forming all things in seven literal days.


Gordon H. Clark says, "It is at about this stage that Mackay begins to discuss the relation between the world and God. His view of creation is not clear. 'Chance in the sense of chaos is indeed recognized (Gen. 1:2), but only as something banished from the world by God's creative word' (p. 49). This seems to say that there was a physical world of chaos before God created the cosmos. This is similar to the work of Plato's demiurge. Yet two pages later he says, 'God has conceived and made our world out of nothing.' Then later he says, 'Creation . . . . is not just a single datable event which happened at a particular time; it is rather a continuing relationship of dependence between us and God' (p. 69). How does this fit in with 'Let there be light, and there was light'? How also does a continuing relationship between God and man fit in with 'And on the seventh day God ended his work . . . and rested . . . from all his work which he had made'? Has not Mackay again contradicted himself? That the world is now upheld by the power of God is undeniable; but creation out of nothing must be instantaneous." - Beahaviorism and Christianity, Pg. 93

The cause of all things is the will of God

"The will of God is so the cause of all things, as to be itself without cause, for nothing can be the cause of that which is the cause of everything. So that the Divine will is the ne plus ultra of all our inquiries; when we ascend to that, we can go no farther. Hence we find every matter resolved ultimately into the mere sovereign pleasure of God, as the spring and occasion of whatsoever is done in heaven and earth." - Jerome Zanchius, Absolute Predestination, pg. 16 - 17

The Christian wars with the system of darkness

In the first chapter of the Gita, the main character, who is about to enter battle with his family and friends, is overcome with a sense of pity and wishes not to enter into battle any more. The reason is that these men are his kin. He knows them and it would therefore be a grievous evil to battle against them, though they wanting to kill him would do so within a heart beat. Here the main character presents to us several ideas 1) should we go to war? 2) ought we to remain passive? 3) how should we think of our beliefs as suppose to others?

For the Christian, however, ideas are different. A Christian is one who accepts the gospel of God's free grace revealed in the Cross work of Christ alone. They see they are sinners lacking a righteousness of their own and so see that the righteousness that they have is the only righteousness that God imputes to them by free and sovereign grace in Christ alone. The Christian therefore sees any other worldly system as bulstering up of man's pride and selfrighteousness. Their aim, therefore, as a result of them being born again by grace alone, and as a result seeing their sin, and their need of a saviour and believing in Him alone for righteousness, is to present the points of the Scripture to their friends and family and to all who do not know God as their Saviour. They rather than succumbing to the idea that any one human being is ok and so therefore everyone is ok make war with the satanic doctrine with the gospel doctrine. They overcome evil with good and not with evil. The Christian does not do this out of pride for they did not come to these things on their own. Instead it was God that changed their minds and gave them a new set of beliefs.

As Paul says we make war but not with the weapons of the world.

Is it evil for God to cause a sinner to rape another sinner?

The Arminian says that Calvinist teach that God is evil because he causes a woman or a child to be raped by a perpetrator. Of course this is nothing but an emotional argument that seeks not the truth of the matter. The question is what is rape compared to other acts of God revealed in the Scripture alone? God destroys the whole earth by the flood, He also destroyed a whole nation by fire and brimstone. Whether God uses another sinner to do that which would be reprehensible to us or some other disaster is no different. The Assyrian king was an ax in the hand of the Lord against his people. God in the Scripture commands his people to destroy whole nations; in other words, genocide (1 Samuel 15:3, Numbers 31). They were to destroy the nations in order to blot out the remembrance of them (Deut. 25:19). Jesus says that likewise you will also perish if you do not repent either.

God who not only knows all that will happen but also causes it to happen by his will

In order not to quote too much of Clark in one little segment, not that it would be bad to quote him fully, I will give a synopsis of what he wrote in the last chapter of Religion, Reason and Revelation - subtitled God and Evil on Pg. 160.
On this page Clark speaks of Omniscience and presents a case of an observer from far off watching two cars about to collide. As far as the observer knows and sees these cars will in fact collide. However, his knowledge of such things does not actually cause the accident. From this view the Arminian-Romanist attempts to explain that God knows the future without causing it to happen.
Clark responds,

The similarity, however, is deceptive on several points. A human observer cannot really know that collision will occur. Though it is unlikely, it is possible for both cars to have blowouts before reaching the intersection and swerve apart. It is also possible that the observer has misjudged the speeds, in which case one car could slow down and the other accelerate, so that they would not collide. The human observer, therefore, does not have infallible foreknowledge.
No such mistakes can be assumed for God. The human observer may make a probable guess that the accident will occur, and this guess does not make the accident unavoidable; but if God knows, there is no possibility of avoiding the accident. A hundred years before the drivers were born, there was no possibility of avoiding the accident. There was no possibility that either one of them could have chosen to stay home that day, to have driven a different route, to have driven a different time, to have driven a different speed. They could not have chosen otherwise than as they did. This means either that they had no free will or that God did not know. [Pg. 160]

In other words God's knowledge of the event from eternity past makes it certain that the event will in fact occur. This is a deathblow to the Arminian and also to the Molinist who want to assert that God does not know for certain whether something would in fact take place. God's knowledge is certain because God's knowledge is perfect.

Clark, continues,

Suppose it be granted, just for the moment, that divine foreknowledge, like human guesses, does not cause the foreknown event. Even so, if there is foreknowledge, in contrast with fallible guesses, free will is impossible. If man has free will, and things can be different, God cannot be omniscient. Some Arminians have admitted this and have denied omniscience, but this puts them obviously at odds with Biblical Christianity. There is also another difficulty. If the Arminian or Romanist wishes to retain divine omniscience and at the same time assert that foreknowledge has no causal efficacy, he is put to it to explain how the collision was made certain a hundred years, an eternity, before the drivers were born. If God did not arrange the universe this way, who did?
If God did not arrange it this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follows. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. . . . Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it - past and future - cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. . . . And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and that he would be a dependent knower. [Pg. 160 - 161]

Sorry I don't want to quote too much of Clark. If one is interested in Clark's argument I would suggest that you go and buy the book preferably at the Trinity Foundation. But, Clark's argument thus far has been to show the irrationalism of those who say that God simply knows what will happen without actually causing it to happen. If God was like the observer he certainly could not know what would happen and if God was not the one causing all things to happen then someone else is and hence God could not know exactly what would happen. But, this is exactly what many Calvinist revert back to in their arguments about God's relation to evil.
Clark, says,

Plato  in his Republic attempted to account for evil by the assumption that God is not the cause of everything, but only of a few things - few because our evils far outnumber our goods. In the Timaeus he was not quite so pessimistic, but he still held that there is an eternal and chaotic Space which the Demiurge cannot entirely control. To the end, therefore, it must be said, Plato retained an unreconciled dualism.
Aristotle, because his philosophy is so completely irreligious, is somewhat an exception in antiquity. He conceived God in such a way that his relation to evil, or to the moral endeavors of men, hardly mattered. The Unmoved Mover is in a sense the cause of all motion, but instead of being an active cause, he causes motion by being the object of the world's desire. He exercises no voluntary control over history. Though he is constantly thinking, he does not seem to think about the world, or, at most, he knows only a part of the past and nothing whatever of the future.
Naturally, the great Christian philosopher Augustine grappled with the difficulty. Under Neoplatonic influence he taught that all existing things are good; evil, therefore, does not exist - it is metaphysically unreal. Being non-existent, it can have no cause, and God therefore is not the cause of evil. When a man sins, it is a case of his choosing a lowest good instead of a higher good. This choice too has no efficient cause, although Augustine assigns to it a deficient cause. In this way God was supposed to be absolved. Augustine, admittedly, was a great Christian and a great philosopher. Later in the chapter more will be said about him. But here he was at his worst. Deficient causes, if there are such things, do not explain why a good God does not abolish sin and guarantee that men always choose the highest good. [Pg. 145]

Many Calvinist say the very same things that Augustine says with regards to God's relation to evil. R.C. Sproul for instance also speaks to Reprobation being a negative decree and not a positive one. The point that Augustine says is that God merely removes his grace from the situation. In which case the question is properly asked, 'why?' If God was concerned for the greater good then why in fact does evil exist? Could God not have created a world in which there was no evil? This is where the supposedly Christian philosopher tries to respond to the question of God and evil. This is where I will say as a Christian and as Calvinist that God wanted evil to occur and he does so for His own purpose. Yes evil glorifies God. God is equally ultimate what happens in this world.

John Calvin says,

Let us suppose, for example, that a merchant, having entered a wood in the company of honest men, imprudently wanders from his companions and, pursuing a wrong course, falls into the hands of robbers, and is murdered. His death was not only foreseen by God, but also decreed by him. For it is said, not that he has foreseen to what limits the life of every man would extend, but that he 'hath appointed bounds which he cannot pass.' Yet, as far as our minds are capable of comprehending, all these circumstances appear fortuitous. What opinion shall a Christian form on this case? He will consider all the circumstances of such a death as in their nature fortuitous, yet he will not doubt that the providence of God presided, and directed fortune to that end. Institutes. I. XVI. IX.