by Kent Leslie ✉️
Certain verses in the scriptures, Ecclesiastes included, get interpreted as if they support determinism, the popular belief that our actions and decisions aren’t actually made by us ourselves, but come as the inevitable result of a long chain of events, set into motion long, long ago by a first cause. Christian determinists (and Jewish determinists, and Muslim determinists) figure the first cause was God; Hindus figure it was the universe; atheists figure it was the Big Bang; take your pick of your favorite Unmoved Mover.
The reason people see determinism in the scriptures is because we wanna. Determinism is a popular idea. People take a lot of comfort in the idea everything has a cause; everything happens for a reason; everything’s part of God’s plan; there are no accidents; there are no coincidences. Everything, they figure, now has meaning. We just don’t know the meaning. (Yet.)
But determinism is not a God-idea. Nor a Hebrew idea, Jewish idea, nor Christian idea. Not Catholic, not Protestant, not Evangelical, not Pentecostal. Determinism is a human idea. It predates Christianity. Daoism and karma are based on it. Greek philosophers like Heraclitus, Leucippus, Aristotle, and the Stoics taught it. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a big fan.
Determinism predates Christianity, but got added to Christianity, and I give a lot of credit to John Calvin for that.
Calvin (1509–64) was one of the very first and important Protestant theologians. His church in Geneva helped start the Church of Scotland and translate the Geneva Bible—which hugely influenced the English Puritans, including the Plymouth colonists; and birthed the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Calvinism has a lot of fans in a lot of churches. In fact my theology teachers when I went to Bethany, even though it was a Pentecostal school, even though they themselves are Pentecostal, were all Calvinist. They learned Calvinism at Fuller Seminary and Yale Divinity School, thought it made sense, and taught it to us Bethany students. So yeah, I studied John Calvin, read his Institutes of the Christian Religion, and still use his commentaries from time to time. He was a bright guy!
But Calvin was nonetheless a messed-up product of his time. You see, he grew up in France under an absolute monarchy, where Louis XII and Francis I ruled his country with iron fists. Just as firmly as any present-day dictator. That’s the kind of sovereign Calvin knew… so that’s the kind of sovereign he imagined God is. Calvinism’s core principle is God’s sovereignty: God is almighty, God rules the cosmos, and God determines everything that happens in his cosmos. Nothing happens without his direct approval. Everything happens because God planned it that way. It’s all part of what they call God’s “will of purpose”—his secret will, which God didn’t put in the bible, but keeps to himself.
So they claim God has two wills: The revealed will, and the secret will. Got a chart for you so you can compare them.
Now here’s the messed-up part: Part of God’s secret will includes evil, ’cause it’s no-fooling part of the plan. Adam and Eve fall for the serpent’s temptation, ’cause it’s part of the plan, ’cause Jesus can’t die for humanity’s sin unless humanity sins. Which humanity does. A lot.
Jesus will get crucified. Abraham Lincoln will get assassinated. Adolf Hitler will kill 13 million people, including half the Jews on earth. Dictators will start wars, and their armies will pillage and rape and destroy. Corporations will poison the environment. Madmen will shoot up schools. Hollywood will make dirty movies. But God’s still in control, and God determines everything—which means even though this evil stuff happened—and there’s more to come!—it’s all part of God’s secret will. He decreed it will happen, and nothing will stop his decrees.
Yet at the very same time, Calvinists insist God doesn’t do evil. Others did the evil—as they were determined to, as part of God’s secret plan… yet somehow God’s not at fault for suborning their evil. Calvinists don’t explain how God’s not at fault; they just insist he’s not. Even though he is, ’cause God’s in control. But he’s not, ’cause he’s good. Yeah, it’s a contradiction, but they call it a mystery—and unlike every other mystery in the bible, God hasn’t told us how this one works, because he’s not gonna reveal his secret will. (Lucky for Calvinist theologians, the secret will’s massive ethical paradoxes are all part of the secret.)
Now, my explanation: God hasn’t told us how any of this works, because God doesn’t have a secret will. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. [1Jn 1.5]
I studied Calvinism pretty extensively. I had to, for my classes, but also to deal with my doubts about it. The reason I’m no Calvinist is because if God made evil a part of his plan, there’s an awful lot of evil in the world; way more evil than good. Any plan which requires more evil than good is logically (and mathematically) evil. Decreeing such an evil plan would make God evil.
And he’s not. Evil is our fault, not God’s. When evil happens, it’s not his will; it goes against his will. He told us in the bible what his will is. His plan is no secret; it’s to save the world through Christ Jesus. It’s the gospel. We preach that plan. We have no business claiming he has a secret evil plan, just so we can feel like things are in control, and aren’t vanity… like Qohelet says everything is.
So any time some determinist tells me everything happens for a reason, I usually tell them there’s an entire book of the bible which says most things happen for no reason. That’d be Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities; it’s all vanity. Lemme quote this verse in particular:
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but time and chance happen to them all.
If everything happens for a reason, there is no such thing as chance. Nothing’s random, nothing’s coincidence, nothing’s an accident, nothing is luck or fortune. Everything is God’s fault. (Including evil.)
I’ve lost count of all the times atheists have complained to me that disaster after disaster must be God’s fault, because “everything happens for a reason,” right? Which is why I keep having to quote Ecclesiastes 9.11 at them. Time and chance, folks. God didn’t determine any of this stuff. Now yes, there are bible verses which say he is behind various disasters—like when he had the Assyrians and Babylonians conquer Israel. But y’all know when Elijah went to Mt. Sinai to talk to God, and Elijah saw wind and earthquake and fire, and God wasn’t in either the wind or earthquake or fire. [1Ki 19.11-12] He’s not in every disaster. He doesn’t have to be.
He can always make something good come from disaster. He does that a lot. Sometimes the good things are so good, people suspect he might’ve created the disaster just to make good things come from it. But no.
I absolutely believe God is sovereign. In fact he’s so sovereign, he doesn’t need to micromanage the universe! Everything can function without God having to pull every single lever or string. In fact if he had to pull all the levers, it’d mean he’s a lousy creator, right? It’s like a guy who builds a robot… but instead of filling it with circuits and levers and gears, he hollows it out and climbs into it. How is that a robot and not a puppet? But that’s not too far away from how Calvinists claim God sovereignly rules the cosmos. Their God is actually a very weak God. He’s not mighty; he’s busy. He’s gotta keep up the illusion that his universe runs on its own! A truly mighty God speaks the stars into existence, and they’ll shine for billions of years without him ever needing to touch them. He can intervene, if he wants; he is sovereign after all. But he never has to, because he’s a wise creator and made ’em work the way he wants them.
Now us humans are not the way he wants us. We sinned; we’re fallen; we’ve all gone wrong. So God has to intervene a lot. But that’s hardly determinism. He still lets us choose to follow him, or not. His grace is not irresistible, like the Calvinists claim. You can resist him. But don’t: He’s trying to save you!