critiquing Calvinism (1st of many posts)

Calvinism has a dark side that few Calvinists will openly acknowledge.  I admire those who will acknowledge the logical implications of their view that God meticulously controls everything that has ever happened, is happening and will ever happen - even when those things constitute horrendous evil.

When it comes to explaining the problem of evil, its "achilles heel" is most exposed.

Pastorally, many Calvinists will "counsel" (and act) more like Arminians, but you can’t have it both ways.  God cannot be “rendering everything certain” as He meticulously controls everything under their exaggerated view of what sovereignty means, and yet somehow when cancer comes, a rape occurs or some other unquestioned evil takes place, that God is off the hook.  Augustine taught tragically that EVERYTHING that happens is God’s will because His will in unconquerable.  So many theological systems continue to be infected with this Augustinianism, including Roman Catholic ideas of the “greater good”.  William Lane Craig (a Molinist who often sounds very Arminian) articulates the exact same position as the Roman Catholic one about everything happening for a designed “purpose” to bring about a greater good.  

Biblically of course we all must affirm and believe that God can and does "work everything together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose" (Rom 8:28) but it in no way follows that the evil that is included in the "everything" was somehow designed by Him and planned.  No one denies that God brings good out of evil and suffering.  The false conclusion is that because He has can and will do this (and that He is so remarkable at doing it), that somehow the evil and/or suffering was part of His plan/design to begin with.  This doesn’t work and the atheists who rightly understand the implications of this Augustinian influence are right to reject this God as some type of moral monster.  

On this point, I so appreciate the work of the Arminian theologian, Roger Olson, who continues to not only defend the universal position of the pre-Augustinian Church, but rightly challenges Calvinists/Augustinians to own up to the logical implications of their view of God’s sovereignty.  To quote Olson, 

"They [Calvinists] talk endlessly about God’s glory and about God-centeredness while sucking the goodness out of God and thus divesting him of real glory. Their theology may be God-centered but the God at its center is unworthy of being at the center. Better a man-centered theology than one that revolves around a being hardly distinguishable from the devil.”

This quote was more about the implications of Calvinist predestination in man’s salvation, but it fits “hand in glove” in critique of their meticulous control view of sovereignty as it relates to evil and suffering in the world.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Calvinist/Augustinian view of election and their view of evil and suffering make it hard, if not impossible, to distinguish between God and the devil.  In many ways, it makes God out to be worse than the devil because at least when it comes to the devil, we expect him to inflict evil and suffering as a part of his corrupted nature, but in the case of our all-loving, all-good Heavenly Father, those descriptive adjectives (loving, good) become deceptive and meaningless if He is the ultimate designer, and the one who “renders certain” rapes, cancers, abductions, abuse, etc. as part of His mysterious eternal degree and will.  

Is God sovereign?  Absolutely.  Is the Calvinist concept of sovereignty exaggerated, extreme and therefore false?  Sadly, yes.  It isn't hyper, meticulous control of absolutely everything that constitutes His sovereignty.  The Bible reveals a much different notion of what sovereignty means and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of verses that support the Arminian position.