Calvinism Part Two

Start with the question we often dodge: if God truly reigns over everything, where do our choices fit—and what hope do we have when life breaks? We dig into sovereignty without slogans, defining it as God’s comprehensive rule over outcomes and the very means that lead to them. From prophecies fulfilled down to details no one could stage, to Jesus’ death as both human injustice and divine rescue, we explore why comfort in suffering only holds if God is actually in charge.

We also turn toward the hard edge: evil and the goodness of God. Rather than paint evil as a rival force, we frame it as privation—goodness twisted—and show how that lens clarifies today’s messes without slipping into despair. Then we go straight at the free will debate. Do we choose meaningfully if God ordains all things? Yes—creaturely responsibility and divine authorship run in parallel across Scripture. Judas made a real choice; God fulfilled a real plan. That tension isn’t a bug to patch but a truth to trust, and it makes life less random, not more.

For listeners who love theology and those who just want to live it, we keep it practical. We explain supralapsarian and infralapsarian views without smoke, share a personal journey from idolizing autonomy to resting in grace, and make the case for humility as the authentic fruit of the doctrines of grace. Most importantly, we invite you to major on what unites us in Christ and get into the trenches together. Debate well, read widely (especially your critics), and let Scripture rewrite your margins with joy.

If this conversation helped you think or breathe a little easier, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more people can find it. What part of sovereignty or freedom do you wrestle with most?

Transcript

Setting The Stage For Round Two

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey everyone, welcome to Navigate Podcast. I'm here with Justin. How are you doing? What's up, bro? Not much. Are you uh you about to take us into round two on all the things? I am. So if you haven't listened to last week's podcast on Calvinism, go do it because this is going to build on that. We're gonna And don't freak out.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

You're not going to hell if you don't agree on all the things. But I will pray for your salvation because you're probably going to hell. I mean, if you want to play strictly the odds, if a random person Let me tell you, let me tell you what I know. Calvinists would be uh more quick to roast that video than a non-Calvinist would, I feel like. So it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

That's probably true. Yeah, it'll be good. Yeah, no, I think I think we'll be good, but yeah, go listen to it. If you haven't, we'll wait for you. Welcome back. All right. So let's go ahead and dive into it. So I wanted to take us today on to that was awesome. Thanks. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Next time I'll I'll I'll be more locked in. I'll go there with you. You're sure. Okay, so we're gonna hit some maybe more particular questions.

Defining God’s Sovereignty Clearly

SPEAKER_00 1:11

More particular questions, more spicy questions. We've kind of talked about what it is. Um now we're gonna talk about some of the not necessarily pitfalls, but some of the the conversation topics that people bring up as like but aha moments. Okay, sure. The the gotcha questions around these particular topics. The gotcha questions, or or more um charitably read as uh the the troublesome topics that people have that they need to kind of walk through to get there. Okay, great. Well, I'm looking forward to it. So hit me hit me with some of these. So the the first one I wanted to talk about is is kind of God's sovereignty. A lot of people will forget about God's sovereignty until they need to use it as a cudgel to win some sort of argument.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

And so I kind of wanted to get your take on all right, let's define sovereignty. What is it, what isn't it, um, and and kind of go from there on that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

I mean, the the the best way to to sum this up is probably just to say God's comprehensive rule and reign over all things. Like it's literally his um the Bible says that all things are held together by the word of his mouth. You know what I mean? Like literally atoms, subatomic particulars like quarks and their half-lives, like everything that everything that we can see and cannot see, God is in control of, uh ruling over, and is acting in accordance to his efficacious or sovereign will. He is bringing about what he wants to bring about. Okay. And this is a terrifying idea because there's a lot of uh boogeyman uh going on at the same time, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah. So I'm assuming that's probably where we're going. What I did want to say first is that there's some aberrant views of sovereignty, which will basically um anthropomorphize this idea and say something along the lines of sovereignty is like a king ruling over a nation, but like a king ruling over a nation, that doesn't mean he knows about what's going on with a nation. It's just that he's technically in charge of it. You took the words right out of my mouth. Okay, cool. Exactly. So this kind of mentality ultimately boils down to us attributing human characteristics to God instead of uh understanding that we are not like God and God is not like us, right? So he's perfect, he is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, he is omni, you know, benevolent. He's I mean, he is a gracious, good God that is all-encompassing. I mean, and David makes this clear whether I, you know, make my bed in Sheol or whether I rise uh, you know, on the on the wings of dawn, there you are. Like you are never going to be away from God, and there's nothing that is out of what he is ultimately bringing about or doing. Um, that being said, I'm sure we'll get into this. Uh, God is not the author of evil or sin. So those two things go together.

Anthropomorphic Language In Scripture

SPEAKER_00 4:11

We will and we will indeed get into that. Before we do, um, just a couple of kind of uh ancillary points that some people might might use and and how you would kind of respond to them. So I've I've heard it said, you know, people will cherry pick some some passages about like, well, God was in the Garden of Eden and he asked where Adam and Eve were, or God, it says um went down to Sodom and Gomorrah to see what was happening. Like, how do how do you handle those? Now I think these are probably a little bit easier than some of the other ones we might hit later on.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

But yeah, yeah. Yeah, so when a human is writing um uh about God, you have to consider the fact that he's going to use language that we understand or that we are familiar with, right? So God is uh God is spirit, right? Like God the Father is is spirit, so he's not literally walking around and like, oh, I I had no idea that this was happening. Did you know that this was going on, spirit? Like a freak exodus. I mean, yeah, like uh literally, there's there's certain parts of the Bible. I'm trying to think, the one in Exodus blows my mind. He's like, I'm not doing this until the fullness of the sin of the Amorites has come to completion. Like there's a certain amount of sin I am waiting for to happen before I'm going to bring about the thing that I'm going to bring about. Like God is conscious of how many hairs are on your head, if a sparrow falls somewhere in the rainforest, you know what I mean? And sovereign, and I would this is important. God is not only sovereign over outcomes or controlling outcomes, but he's also controlling the means to those outcomes. Yeah. Like this is how prophecy happens. Uh so if somebody's like, he's not really in control, he's kind of aware of these things happen. I'm like, how do you have uh, how do you have where Jesus would be born, uh, how he would die, who he would die next to, the exact method of execution that they would use, that his clothes would be gambled for. You know what I mean? All the things that go into, you know, uh the the life of Jesus 700 years before that even happens, just in the book of Isaiah alone.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

That's a lot of free choices that happen to go the right way. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Like, wow, what are the odds? And I heard somebody that you know talking about this basically saying God was waiting for all of these things to eventually happen. And when he saw the opportune moment, that's when he interjected what he was going to do in this particular time because he's such a good chess player. And when all the pieces were perfectly right, then he did something.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

And I'm like, So God is Captain Jack Sparrow now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Uh-huh. And I mean, when you see the Bible talks about him controlling storms, you know what I mean? And and um, you know, hurricanes and disastrous winds, it talks about him, you know what I mean. Like again, like I said, even the even the hairs on your head are numbered. If he wants to kill somebody, he's gonna kill somebody, how much sin is going on in a particular place, like everything that God is in control over, sees and is actively involved in. I think uh I think it should humble us a little bit, and we should be very careful about taking certain texts and saying, aha, there's there's this. And when we ascribe human characteristics to God because he's condescending to to our language to help us understand who he is, we should understand that when um when the Lord is talking to a dog, or let me say it this way, although that works, um, if I'm talking to a dog or a very small child, I'm not gonna use the same language that I would because they don't understand it. I'm gonna use language that's within their understanding to help them get somewhat of an idea of what's actually going on. So we should be careful.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah, I can't explain to my dogs that are currently digging up the grass in my new yard. Why this Kentucky blue is valuable, how much it will cost me to reseed the yard and all that. No, I can't explain. I can only communicate to them as best I can to be obedient not to do it.

Sovereign Ends And Sovereign Means

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah. Well, and Jesus said this, right? Uh, how can I how can I speak to you of heavenly things if you don't even understand the earthly things that I'm trying to communicate to you? But uh to anth anthropomorphic or anthropomorphized to means to ascribe human characteristics to something is not human.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

God, um now the incarnate Christ is human, but I'm saying when we're talking about the Godhead, in general, we're not talking about something that is human, it is holy, it's other. He is um in a totally different world that we do not understand. And apart from Christ, we would have absolutely no ability to connect or understand what's going on with that. Jesus is the bridge that helps us understand, and and he's the the icon is the word in the Greek, like the the the icon of God. Like I can, if I click on this, I can understand the entire thing and I have access to it, right? He's the representation of God so that we understand who God is at the level of a human, which God is not.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah. And I mean, not only do we not understand God on a human level, but I would say we don't even begin to understand how much we don't understand what God is.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Yeah, yeah. The the the the farther in you go, the more you realize I'm screwed. Yeah. Yeah. But but we do know enough from the Bible to know that he is um uh the you know, the king's heart is like channels of water in the Lord's hand. He directs it where he wants to. Um, the what's going on with the nations is up to him. What's going on with pestilence and disease is up to him, how much sin he's going to allow for how much time is up to him, um, where a donkey is going to be in a town and an exact time and how it got there. I mean, everything that you when you really start to think about everything that goes into everything else going on. Like we, we, we love time travel movies right now. Everybody's really into like this timeline and that timeline. And it's like if you drop a quarter here where there wasn't a quarter before, you have a whole new thing. You have no idea, the butterfly effect, right? How far something could actually go. And and we realize that one decision can literally change everything, but we don't want to acknowledge that uh uh how that works, like with God. Like you can't just change one thing randomly and have the same outcome and it just works out. No, no, no. God doesn't just ordain the end, he ordains the means to those end, yeah, so that even Christ would be put to death in this particular way with these particular people, so that you would be saved in the way that you were, and so that the world will ultimately be redeemed the way that he is ordained uh before the foundation of the world.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Absolutely. So you brought up this next one actually, yeah. Uh, of evil. Um there is the argument that gets made that, well, if God ordained everything, he's clearly the author of evil, and sure. Um kind of looking at that, and we we call this, you know, the the problem of morality, the morality problem.

The Problem Of Evil And God’s Goodness

SPEAKER_01 10:54

And yeah, how do you address that? The problem of theodicy. Sure. Yeah. So if God is is totally good, right? How come bad things are happening? If he's in control of these things, uh or or he's either in control of these things and he's not good, or he is um all-loving but unable to stop these particular things that are happening, yeah. And the story of the Bible is um an incredibly difficult one to ask, but you should ask it the opposite direction. How come uh God seeing me and my wickedness and my brokenness and all the horrible things that I have done and deserve, how come he doesn't kill me right now? Why why is it that I'm still alive and I'm still doing what I want to do? Because we think that the the evil is out there somewhere and it's horrible and all these things are going on. And it's like, no, no, no, the evil's right here. The question you're asking is, how come God doesn't kill me? Agreed. That's a scandal. That's really hard to like, why doesn't he do this? And ultimately, I think the answer that scripture gives is because he's not done yet. Yeah. If you see wickedness, you see evil, you see brokenness, you should know that he is a displaying his goodness uh in one way or another through that, whether injustice uh towards wickedness, where he's destroying people who are wicked and doing terrible things, or whether he's redeeming people out of that wickedness and showing his mercy and grace and goodness. And if you think about it this way, uh God could not display all of his attributes unless a fallen world existed.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Because there's no wrath unless there's sin, there's no uh justice displayed where there's no brokenness, there's no mercy displayed where there's no need for it, there's no grace displayed where there's no need for it in in in certain senses. So like the I've I've said it this way that um if you think about a um a book or your favorite movies and you take out all of the villains, all of the conflict, all of the difficulty, you take if you have uh, you know, the um if you take Star Wars and you remove, you know, all of the dark side and the Sith and all the things, what do you have? Well, you have some people in the desert farming.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, you know what I mean? What is that? I I would I would hit on this. You do simply just walk into Mordor. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, and you just go in. Yeah, and and Mordor looks more like the Shire than Mordor because everything's puppies and daisies and roses and sleepovers, and it's totally fine. Yeah, yeah. No, the the story that God has written and is unfolding as we're walking through life and reading through scripture and understanding these things is a glorious story that not only has he written where there's brokenness and difficulty and frustration, it's a story that he has personally inserted himself into and gone through all of those difficulties himself to show us that it's not, we are not alone and he has not left us here in this mess, but ultimately that he is redeeming it and all the worst things that could possibly happen, he is going to use for his glory and your good and the the ultimate redemption of the entire world. So uh when we see brokenness and we see frustration, the only way for me that this even makes sense is if you are a sovereignty of God guy, if you are a Calvinist. Otherwise, you're gonna say, all of these things are just happening and it's random. Guess it doesn't mean anything. Yeah, guess the suffering that I'm going through is just arbitrary and God's up there, but you know, Satan was just quicker this time. And I guess I'm just, I guess I'm just stuck with this. And I need to pray harder so he'll actually listen to me and hear me. Uh, because I'm just I'm walking to I mean, literally, it will make every scenario you're walking through pointless and uh it no longer uh means anything. And this is the whole Matthew 8 28, right? Like God causes all things to work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes. Right. Why? Because he's in control of those things that are happening. Jesus being put to death was an absolute mess. It was also the greatest moment for any of us that believe because of what it represents for us. Yeah. So um the idea of sin is usually pitched um kind of in a weird way too. Sin is not a thing, sin is a privation. Evil is a is a privation, is usually how it's talked about. This is it doesn't mean that there was um, it doesn't mean that you have good and you have evil. It means God created all these good things, and evil is ultimately a twisting or a removal of something that something uh of something that was good and that makes it something that it's not supposed to be. We understand this when you think about like uh sex is a good thing. It can become a a problem very quickly in a society when you remove the the sexual ethics of Jesus from the equation. Yeah, you know what I mean. If you think about just our world today, and if if if people actually obeyed what Jesus said about sex, how many things change in our society immediately? Oh, I mean innumerable number of those things, right? So would we say sex is a bad thing? No, it's it's a good thing. But evil privation is what takes it and twists it and makes it something that it was uh not created for uh from a from a functional standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Well, I mean, even to build on that, um the one of the greatest things that we see is the birth of a child. Yeah. And the birth of a child comes from sex.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

But it turns out spoiler. Um but the birth of a child can also be a product of sex done in an evil manner.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Um, and that doesn't diminish that the beautiful thing that's going to be. Exactly. That doesn't diminish the beauty of a child. I mean, yeah, uh touchy topic here a little bit, probably, but like in vitro fertilization.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Um, yeah, you end up seeing the birth of a child for a couple that maybe couldn't have that otherwise. Does that necessarily mean that that act was good or the things that go into that are good?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

No.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

No. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Um, and so and it, yeah, and then we can get into the atrocity of abortion and all the things that are going on. And I would say, yeah, God's sovereign over that too. Yeah. And I believe that ultimately the the bigger they are, the more crazy they are, the more beautiful God is going to um bring about his ultimate redemption in those different areas. And does that mean we shouldn't fight against those things or go to war with wickedness or evil? No, he's or he's ordained that we should do those things as well. Yeah. But the story's not over yet. Yeah.

Evil As Privation And Modern Examples

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Well, I would say too, like, if you look at the modern Christian who is so anti-abortion and as as we should be, and is so heartbroken over that, does that person often feel that same heartbreak over reading the stories of child sacrifice to Molech in in the Old Testament? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I am certainly guilty of not having that same heart position because oh, it it's history, it happened, like, but it doesn't change the fact that God used that to write his story.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Right, right. Everything we read in script, and if I I knew a guy one time, he was like, Man, I tried to read the Bible once and it was terrible. It was full of like rape and murder and all this stuff going on. I'm like, Yeah, it's a reflection of our world. Nothing's really changed in in that sense. It's the story of what God is doing through all of that mess. Yeah. And God is not uh, again, the author of sin, but he is allowing and ordaining whatsoever comes to pass to bring about his ultimate good and perfect plan. And as a Christian, like I said, when we know that God is ultimately in control and going to do what he's going to do, it should give us hope in any kind of circumstance that we serve a gracious God who loves us enough to send his own son into this mess to redeem it and bring about perfection.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

So amen to that. So the next one um kind of ties into a bit of a my own personal story of Okay. Um you know, I have not always held to Calvinism.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I have I have in fact argued the point with you for as often as you could. As often as I could, for for many years. Um and what it came about was a series of events a few years ago, um around the time of my my first daughter being born.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Um, and some things happened in life prior to that. Turns out you didn't choose your birth or your new birth, you know. Turns out. Um, but I came to the end of my rope. I came to brokenness and and yet God was still there and he was faithful, and he um, I would say revealed a lot of things to me through that brokenness, um, not only about myself, but about his plan and bringing everything to a certain culmination there. Can we just agree that our plan sucks?

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Our plan's totally like sometimes it feels like God's plan sucks, and then you find out it doesn't suck.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Like you you read the passage of you know, man plans his ways and the Lord directs his step, and you kind of read it tongue in cheek, and like, well, God's gonna take, but but it's it should be man plans his ways, but thank God he directs our steps. Yeah, because it is so much better. Yeah, yeah. Um, but so yeah, all that to say, what I've kind of come to the conclusion there is one of the things that held me back for so long was this idea of free will. Um, and not just not just wanting to see free will, but I would almost say that idolizing free will was maybe even maybe even a better word for it would be autonomy, autonomy, yeah. Idolizing free will, idolizing autonomy. Yeah, and and in effect limiting what God could do because well, he couldn't do all these good things if I wasn't free to yeah. So let's talk about free will. Let's talk about it actually matter.

Personal Story: From Autonomy To Trust

SPEAKER_01 20:50

In our nation, our country was founded in a lot of ways on this idea of freedom. You know what I mean? Like it's it's in our bones. We talk about freedom, we love freedom, we wave the flag and we hear the eagle screech in the background, and we smell bacon and sea fireworks, and it's like it's this grandiose, beautiful thing. Amen. I love uh whatever whatever freedom we still have in our country, and it's worth fighting for, and all those things, and uh, I'm for it. Um, here's here's what I want to communicate in other countries. This question about free will is not difficult. Like I heard this guy come up in this QA because like three conversations on God's sovereignty had come up, and this guy came from China, and he was like, Hey, I gotta tell you, like, this is not a problem for me. Like, we don't have this big uh freedom thing that we have to check where we feel like we have to maintain this autonomy or that. He's like, 'cause we've kind of been under like rule like this for a long time. Like it's it's not something that we feel is is a difficult question. He he said, like, what's difficult for me is my ancestors. What do I do? You know, I mean, with all my ancestors that are dead now. Are they all in hell? Like what do I do about that? And if I leave them, am I betraying them? And like, all, you know, it's a whole different problem that he's facing. And I think sometimes this particular topic and this difficulty comes out of a very Western way of thinking, especially an American way of thinking, where the idea of freedom and personal autonomy seems to be the quintessential like standard or the quintessential, you know, hill to die on for our particular uh citizenship. Yeah. Right. But uh Philippians tells us that our citizenship is not or is not here, but is in heaven. You know what I mean? Which means like whatever you're trying to hold on to that is uh this belongs to me, not to God, you know, whatever you're trying to hold on to that is, you know, um, this is mine, and God isn't allowed to do this, probably is already an idol that you're burning incense to.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Like I don't know what person in their right mind that's a Christian that would say, God can have this, but I uh this one, I'm keeping this, whether it's this decision that you made, this belief that you have, this particular portion of what you're doing, it's like, what are you why are you trying to hold something back from God that he says belongs to him? And I do think there's this idea of freedom that you're talking about or free will that a lot of people have that that doesn't actually make sense in a lot of other places, but here especially we feel like is central and it defines who I am, right? Like it's it's that kind of mentality. And I would just say the the Bible um gives you you're free to make decisions. You're not autonomous, you're not free to make all decisions. Yeah, God gives you decisions that you can make, and he's bringing about ultimately with what you're doing, uh he's ordained even those things. But that doesn't mean that uh you didn't make that decision, it means God is also making that decision, and that's okay. Yeah. Um what's called divine determinism, right? But but the whole idea of free will is a strange hill that people die on that I don't I don't fully understand why. Um, like I said, I get the ground that we grew in, I get the the culture that we have, I understand the idea of freedom in general, how it gets conflated with God's sovereignty to me, or that particular topic is kind of interesting. And I would say that the first thing about Christianity that I know is your old self has to die. We die, we take up our cross and die, and then we have a new life that is in Christ, right? We're sealed by the Spirit, we're in Christ, and Christ is in God. Literally, it's like I no longer live, but Christ who lives within me. That the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who love him, loved me, and gave himself up for me. What part of that are you trying to reserve? What are you holding back, or what do you think you need? Um, you know what I mean, that God's not going to give you. Um it's a it's a it's a hilarious thing to think that somehow you're you are maintaining something that God doesn't have control over.

Free Will, Responsibility, And Determinism

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yeah, well, and it it begs the question of all right, if you are not free, like if you believe that God's sovereignty means you're not free, do you feel like you're not free? Like I I'm I made my decisions. Yeah. Whether or not they were ordained by God and He already knew, doesn't matter. I made those decisions. Yeah. Uh and people will always get hung up on this idea of, well, it matters that if I could have chosen something else, and this is probably gonna either make some statisticians angry or make them real happy. But the whole point of a choice, if you've made a choice, we live in the present. We don't live in the alternate branching dimensions past. We live in the present. If you made a choice, that means making the other choice isn't actually possible. Yeah, because you didn't make it.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah, you you did something else. Yeah, and that's okay. This this is um, I mean, this gets into even like Judas, right? Uh Jesus says, you know, I I have lost none of those that you have given to me, except for the son of perdition who is doomed for destruction. Like literally, it's like all the ones that you gave to me, except we already knew that this guy wasn't going to make it and was going to go a different direction. So did Judas do that or did God do that? Yes. Yes, yeah. And who killed Jesus? Did God kill Jesus or did the Romans and Jews kill Jesus? Yes. And that is you see it everywhere in scripture is God did this, but these people did this. How do those two things work together? I don't always know, but I know that it does. And this is what the Bible says again and again and again. And I'm not gonna try to sit there and parse that out so that I feel like I have a better grasp of this or that. I'm gonna say, no, God is ordaining whatsoever comes to pass, and yet that not doesn't mitigate or relegate our responsibility for the decisions that we make, one ounce. Yeah, I think that's I think that's straight from that quote might be straight from the Westminster confession. I'd have to, I'd have to check it.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Nice, nice. Um no, to your to your point about Judas, even, um, and this, you know, branching even back down to your time travel um comment, the question of could Judas have chosen not to give Jesus up. No, because he didn't. Yeah. And I think that one of the problems I have with time travel movies, while they're cool and they're fun to watch, is time isn't something that can be trapped. We don't, that's not a human thing. You can't change it.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Might be a good way to say, could he yes, would he no?

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

You know what I mean? Like there are decisions that are available to you. That doesn't mean that you're free even then to make those decisions because you're gonna do the thing that you have the greatest proclivity to do. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Well, and not only are you going to, but you do do the thing that you have the greatest proclivity to do.

Judas, Time, And Real Choices

SPEAKER_01 27:44

And this is not just a this is not just a problem for Christians in general. This is also a problem for uh a lot of people. If you are a byproduct of time and chance and matter and the Richard Dawkins, right? Like you're dancing to the tune of your own DNA. Are you free? Not really. No, right? Like, no, you're you're doing what you were um, you know, you were uh oh, what's the word? You you were set up to do, right? Like this is your nature, how you're conditioned to right? And and I would say you have a nature, these are the things that are happening, and thank God that he's bringing about something beautiful through this instead of just the constant chaos that so many people think we live in and is a byproduct of what's going on. So yeah, free will is a free will is an interesting thing. And I would say this look, you're you are free to make lots of decisions, you're not free um to make all decisions, and the the decisions that you are free to make are yours, but that doesn't mean that God hasn't ordained that and brought it about at the same time. Yeah, just embrace that, get used to it. And and I've said this before, but all of these doctrines are um similar. Yeah, like some of the central um portions of scripture that we adhere to go along the same difficult line. Like who wrote the Bible? Did God write it or did people write it? Yes, how is that possible? I don't know, but that's that's how it happened. Or or uh who lives out your Christian life? Does the Holy Spirit live out your Christian life, or do you live out your Christian life? Yes, yeah, right? Like uh there's there's a bunch of even even trying to explain the Trinity and some of these things, is this is what this is what God does, and it's wondrous and it's glorious, and you and your tiny insignificant mind and my tiny insignificant mind are not.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Fred's label less insignificant mind, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Fred's got that, he's got that mensa smat, you know. But uh the these kind of topics, and I like to talk about it this way too. Like um, light is a particle and a wave. You know what I mean? How is that possible? I don't know, but we know that that's the case, and there's lots of stuff I would say around us today. It's the same thing. We don't fully understand these things, but we know that this is what's true. Yeah. And uh, whenever we read scripture, I want you to see lots of people are making decisions. They're making, you could even say, free decisions that they want to make. And at the same time, God is ordaining and bringing about all of those decisions at the same time, or else um none of this makes any sense. Yeah. So hope that helps. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, you know, and and I can already see the the people in the email saying, well, that's just appealing to the mystery of God. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

It's at some level. I mean, the things are some things aren't a mystery. Like you can't ignore the scriptures that are there, yeah. And be like, well, it can't mean that, or else the mystery is gone in the area that I want it to be in. You know what I mean? Not not as much as a mystery as maybe the things that you're thinking about if you're in that position. Yes. But certainly there are lots of mysteries that we're not fully gonna uh understand with our uh tiny brains. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

So so all right. Next one uh some big words here prolapsarian and infralapsarian. Oh, you're thinking uh super lapsarian.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

So sorry, yeah, super lapsarian and infra-lapsarian. So sorry, lapsarianism. Uh think about to lapse to fall, right? To fall back. So the whole idea of um lapsarianism means uh dealing with the fall of mankind. Yep. All right, so we're talking about Genesis three. The question, uh, and this is such an in-house conversation, because if you're not a Calvinist, this isn't even a thing that you're wrestling with. Yeah, this is just this is just sprinkling for the Calvinists listening. Did God ordain whatsoever came to pass after the fall, or did he or did God ordain everything that came to pass before the fall? Correct. Right? Those are the two camps.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I'm super lapsarian, which means which means for those at home before the fall. Which is less conservative, uh, a lot of uh or more maybe uh depending on how you look at it, less conservative, like uh a little more intense. A lot of people would say, no, God created this, um, he ordained that the fall would happen, and then he ordained a whole nother set of things post-fall. Uh, like it was two two distinct decisions. I would say it was one, and I don't think there's a reason to say that there's two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Um I think if you've already gotten there on on determinism, divine determinism, yeah. It doesn't make sense to say, oh, but but he didn't before the fall. Right. Like there's a there's a read you can make on it, sure. Yeah, but I'm a spoiler alert, I'm also a super lapsarian.

Mystery Without Evasion

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Uh yeah, I I don't know, um, I don't know why you would parse them out, except if you're still trying to force something in there, I just don't think that needs to be in there in the first place. Yeah ultimately, uh, whatsoever comes to pass is what God has ordained from eternity past to come to pass. And we already brought up uh the different characteristics of God that we get to see in those kinds of things, the ultimate story that he's playing out, all the typology uh of scripture itself and how these things work together. I don't think you need to disconnect one portion of scripture from how it's operating with the rest of it. And again, there might be some theologian out there who has some really deep insights on this that are maybe uh maybe fantastic. I think Calvin was infralapsarian. So there might be uh there might be some good reasons to take that particular side. I am not in a position where I feel like there's any good reason to, it feels to me like just holding out on going full, going all in on I think what the sovereignty of God entails. Yeah. So uh so if you come past uh super lapsarianism or uh uh super sublapsarianism or infralapsarianism, there's there's different categories for each of these and how they kind of play out, but ultimately it's did God ordain everything from the beginning or did he ordain up to that and then ordain a bunch of stuff afterwards?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yeah. Um, and just a fun thought exercise for those at home. If ever you want to just kind of blow your mind a little bit, start thinking about what God did before he created everything, and then before that, and then before that. And just suddenly you'll get this train of, oh man.

Supralapsarian vs Infralapsarian

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Dude, the the hardest question for me that I the Bible doesn't answer. How did the first thought of sin occur? Like not just how did the first sin happen, yeah, but we're talking about a perfect environment where everything is exactly as it should. And I'm not talking about with Eve, I'm talking about with Satan. How did the first thought of evil even enter into that equation in the first place? I don't know. And the and the Bible frankly doesn't tell me. Nope. So I don't know. That's for free. So if you guys want something that you want anything that is pre-Eden, uh, the Bible doesn't really speak to a whole lot, and you're you're probably uh gonna be in danger coming up with ideas because you don't have anything solid to work with.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

No, it'll be uh it'll be a fun, a fun topic of conversation in heaven.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, Jonathan Edwards got into that a little bit, but yeah, another time. Yeah. Um if you want the best explanation, sure. Read the Silmarillion. The beginning of the Silmarillion. It'll give you everything that you need. I mean, you should just read the Silmarillion anyway. It was but yes. Yeah, it was all music from Iru, Louvatar, and uh Melkor screwed things up, but God made it work anyways.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

God made it work. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

What do you got for me next, bro? Before we devolve into more uh Middle Earth nerdiness. You know, I mean, we could do that. Welcome, welcome to the Middle Earth Podcast. Oh my gosh. Uh did we just launch another podcast?

SPEAKER_00 35:25

Let's go. Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Um it's upon you whether you would risk it or not. So yeah. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Um sorry for everyone at home who thinks we're nerds. We are. We are um so one of the big more open-ended ones that I kind of wanted to delve into here is um there is a lot of people who we we kind of touched on this at the beginning of the last one where people get a little bit you know iffy about the word Calvinism, they think it's the boogeyman. And a lot of people will then take that in and turn it into vitriol and will almost accuse people who hold Calvinistic viewpoints as being cultish. Sure. Um what do you do with someone who who has that vitriol who holds that and I want to kind of talk about how we you know build fellowship with other believers who hold different points of view.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah. Yeah, I I alluded to this a little bit, but I think my goal would be to emphasize uh the things that we're fighting for and what we're working towards together. Because oftentimes methodology and theology are two different uh problems.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah.

Charity Across Differences

SPEAKER_01 36:37

So if somebody is an Arminian and has a view of like provenient grace, um, I don't think we're going provenient grace is kind of the belief that as I preach the Holy Spirit is working and is going to go forth and knock on hearts and people have a chance to respond or not respond. Okay. All right. Um, it's not really gonna change our desire to see the gospel go forth or people saved or lives changed. Uh, it's not really gonna change uh the majority of beliefs that we have around who God is and what he's accomplishing and how we're part of that or the obedience that we should have. It's not gonna change a lot about our view of who Christ is and what we uh have gained in this you know glorious salvation that Christ has accomplished for us. It's not going to um change a whole lot. It's just gonna, it's just gonna create some opportunities for, let's say, good, healthy banter and conversation. Okay. Um, my my walk has not been riddled with a lot of these arguments um because I think I've been emblazoned in battle with these people. So uh if you're going to abortion clinics and trying to save babies, you don't care if the guy next to you is Armenian. You you don't care at all. If you're trying to help save marriages that are broken and messy, majority of ministry for me has been with really messy people and really messy circumstances and trying to bring the light of the word of God uh into those circumstances and help bless people and encourage them and walk with them and like everyday stuff that's going on. I've never, I've never one time while I was you know talking with somebody uh, you know, about what was going on that was broken in their life, felt a need to bring up super lapsarianism in that conversation. Those are conversations that we get to have that are in-house with other mature believers that want to grow and push each other uh and have those conversations. But I would say um don't let differences become whole new denominations. And oftentimes it's it's frustrating difficulties or over-emphasis on particular things that really send people into weird circumstances. Uh, and I would say, man, you know, major on the majors, minor on the minors. And if you think that, you know, regeneration comes after repentance, I'm not gonna burn you alive for it. Although I do think uh Servetus was a heretic, and I probably would have burned him again for you uh Calvin fans out there. Uh I I do think that um it is a big deal online. Yes. It is not nearly as big of a deal in your church when you're ministering next to somebody. And I would say if your emphasis is on I don't like this guy's theology, I would say, how about you just go do some ministry together? Because I bet you're basically the same in how you approach stuff. You just have a slightly different view of how those things happen as you're walking it out.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

That kind of almost answers the the question I was going to ask next about that, where so uh we talked off-air about a particular podcaster who spends a lot of his time um as a previous Calvinist talking against Calvinism.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

It's like his whole ministry. It's exactly his whole ministry is go convince people that they're uh they're validated in their aggressive adherence to uh a type of free will that the Bible doesn't espouse. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

And so, you know, your point about taking it offline, going and doing ministry side by side, that's kind of your answer is how you approach someone like that. And like you, I would almost say, you know, if you're debating with someone in a fun environment because your brother's in arms and you're breaking bread together and you're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

You're sharpening each other, you're pushing each other.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

If you're debating to tear down other believers, yeah, you're you've missed something.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Or to like choke them out, you know what I mean. And and again, I will say Calvinists will do it as well. Oh, yeah. Like they love to just jump on and look, we're gonna go right to the canons of Dort, you know what I mean? And we're gonna, you know, it's um it's not super helpful to be the online theology warrior. Write papers, study the Bible, talk with other believers, grow in your beliefs, um, establish convictions and fight for them, but don't ever lose what Christ has ultimately called us to do, what we're called to accomplish together, and that those people are part of the body of Christ. And I don't want to beat up on God's bride. I don't think that's a great way to keep the Lord pleased. Absolutely. So I I would say, yeah, focus on Christology, missiology, get in the trenches together, get some work done, and especially on this area where both sides are orthodox, breathe out and then make sure those conversations are in the context of we're already in ministry doing stuff together. Let's work through this. There might be some times where you get to a place where um, man, you hit a text and it's like you're either gonna fall on one side or the other of this one. And I would say I've been in churches where they fall on the other side, and I didn't feel like I immediately had to leave the church or get out. I know some people take that view. That's okay, that's not where I land, but that doesn't mean I can't do ministry with you or be here or be a part of the fellowship. Just because that's the way that you teach things, I'm gonna acknowledge whether it's an orthodox position or not. If it's unorthodox, that's a different conversation. But both Calvinists and Armenius are orthodox. Um, the Calvinists are just right, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

So yeah, no, and I I would say too, if you if you take that approach of having to leave the church over those splits with every issue you come across, the only church you'll end up in is the one you start.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yeah, buckle up, buddy. Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be a long ride all the way back to your home, yeah, you know, uh where you eventually try to start your own church that doesn't work well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

So um so those are the those are the big ones I had. Are there any that come to mind for you that you you'd like to touch on?

Do Ministry Together, Not War

What Calvinism Should Produce: Humility

SPEAKER_01 42:12

When we talk about this topic, here's here's what I would say. What it should produce, um, the doctrines of grace, right? What it should produce is humility. Like, I'm not awesome, God is. God has accomplished this, he is ordaining what is coming to pass, he is bringing these things about, and I have the opportunity to cooperate and walk alongside the spirit to bring about the great things that God is doing. Um, so if somebody, uh, I love the Spursion quote, he says, if any man thinks ill of you, don't be upset. You're far worse than he thinks you to be. You know, like, and I think that's the mentality that we ultimately should have. It's like we haven't deserved or earned any of this. So stop, stop acting like somehow you're this or you're that. No, man, everything that we have is from grace, and we get to walk in that, which means even arguments that you're gonna end up in, ultimately it's like, bro, I don't I don't feel the need to sit here and win this particular argument with somebody where we're arguing over something that is actually kind of superfluous given the mission that we're called to and what Christ has called us to accomplish, which is discipling the nations. Maybe we should work on that. Maybe we should, you know. Um, other stuff that I would say is, man, so many people start and believe that they're never going to change their conviction on this particular topic. And I would say this it's usually I'm a diehard Arminian, and one day you might find yourself being a Calvinist. Yep. And I would say, that's okay. Don't freak out. Read the Bible, get just fall madly in love with the Word of God. And if you will take the Bible seriously, allow it to shape and form your thoughts and uh hum give you humility in the way that you approach it, it will reshape a lot of the way that you're thinking about stuff. And that is not a bad thing, it's a really good thing. But what you grew up with may not. Be um accurate to scripture. And again and again and again I've run into stuff in my own in my own walk with God where I had old Bibles where I had notes written in the margin. And you're like, and then I went back. Yeah, I literally had places where I scratched that out and I wrote in there, like, uh, actually, it's this. That's okay. Like Israel, Jacob wrestled with God. And I think we're to wrestle with God's word. And oftentimes you're going to find yourself being tapped out by the amount of scriptures that are going to point different directions than what you thought they were originally. And the goal in that moment is not, no, I have to fight. The goal is go ahead and die. Like let the scripture kill this thing in you. Change. Yeah. Be willing to change some of your perspectives on things and work through these things because it's not ultimately about the perfect worldview that I have that I feel the most comfortable with. It's getting close to God and knowing that he's given me a comforter because he's going to send me into some uncomfortable things. I'm going to have to work through it. And there's a there's a ton of things about God that should make us um very uncomfortable. You know, the Bible tells us in Jeremiah, right? Like the man that he's looking for, someone who will tremble at his word. There's gonna be times where there's tears on your pages because you're seeing something you never saw before, and it's gonna rewrite the entire way that you read this thing. And it'll break you, and that's good. And then work on it with other people. Don't do it in isolation, don't become the the next Jim Jones, okay? Because there are things that we can read in the Bible that we can get totally wrong, and we want to run it by other godly people. Yeah. And I would say this don't just read books in your own camp. I have more books that are anti-Calvinist on my bookshelf than I do Calvinist books because I think it's really good to read people that disagree with you. Yeah. Read, read different people who have different ideas and different opinions and get comfortable with those things. If you ever read uh the Summa, uh the Summa Theologica, um Thomas Aquinas, okay. He kind of put steel manning on the map. Yeah. Like what he did was he wrote the best possible argument uh at the top of the section, you know, for the book that he's writing, that that argument could have. And then his goal was to go to war with that particular thing. Don't straw man everything. Don't just say, well, this or God can't or whatever. Like, no, actually interact with it. Yeah, give the best possible argument that somebody can give and then work from that place to through scripture to get to a place where you really feel confident that no, this is this is a more accurate understanding of what the Bible is trying to say in these areas. Like I said, and and and man, just work through these things. Um, you'll grow immensely. Don't don't be afraid also of the that's too heady for me, or it's too much for me, or I'm not this person. I would say, no, no, no, no, no. Like God's gonna grow you as you wrestle with him and and get after this stuff. And whatever you're refusing to do or you feel scared of getting into, you're just stunting your own growth. Grow. Have fun, read, read a lot, listen to other people, uh, buy some books or audiobooks or whatever you're into, listen to some other podcasts and get a grip on this thing, but but fight to understand the word of God and at the end of the day, go with what your conscience tells you is the best possible reading of the word of God, not what you feel most comfortable with in your own proclivities. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

And then breathe in, like you said, and breathe out. And then and then trust God. Yep. Amen. Well, thank you, Justin. I really appreciate you taking us through those. Dude, I love it, man.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

Thanks for the time, and we'll uh we'll get after it next week. Absolutely. All right, you guys have a great week.