One of the features of the White and Ross debate was an attack afterwards on Thomas Ross by White followers, because he would not “answer” questions of White.  I disagree.  Ross answered all of White’s questions.  He just didn’t like Ross’s answers.  When I watched the White and Van Kleeck debate, White wouldn’t answer Van Kleeck’s questions, really not answer them.

A recent episode of Soteriology 101 with Leighton Flowers popped up on my phone.  I’m not a subscriber.  The title was “Popular Calvinist Makes a Stunning Admission,” and I could see the Calvinist was James White on the cover.  So, as click bait, that worked for me.  I had to see what the “stunning admission” from White was.

The Determination by God of All Moral Evil?

The main theme of Flowers’s podcast was the determination by God of all moral evil.  Flowers doesn’t believe it, but he quoted Calvin as believing it.  He explained the effect of this belief.  If this is God, people reject Him because they don’t think He’s good.  The Calvinist answers that God is right, these things are just beyond our full comprehension.  Here’s the quote by Calvin that says this exact thing:

But how it was ordained by the foreknowledge and decree of God what man’s future was without God being the author and approver of transgression, is clearly a secret so much excelling the insight of the human mind, that I am not ashamed to confess ignorance.

Flowers says that Calvin is saying, “I don’t know how God is good with my view of determinism, just that I know that He is.”  Something like that.  He’s accepting God decrees moral evil, yet He’s still good, because God is good.

People like myself say, “God does not decree or determine moral evil.”  If someone says that God does that, we say, “No, He doesn’t.”  We might quote James 1:13:

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.

Guillaume Bignon

White has endorsed the book by French Calvinist, Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil.  In a recent interview, Bignon says:

Determinism is not the thesis that some things are determined.  It’s the view that all things are determined.

Bignon is asked, Did God determine then for other theologians, like Muller, to disagree with you?  He answers, “Yes,” because God determined everything.  In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book 1, Chapter 16, Paragraph 3), Calvin said:

Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he knowingly and willingly decreed.

Did God Decree a Rape?

Calvin taught that God destined the will of every man to do whatever man did and does.  In his debate with George Bryson, Bryson asks White this:

When a child is raped, is God responsible?  Did he decree that rape?

Based on the understanding White and his fans hold for answering a question, White would not answer Bryson’s question.  He did answer it, but he would not say, yes or no, until pinned down by the moderator.  When White asks a “yes or no” question, he and his followers expect a yes or a no.  They don’t hold that standard for White, as seen in the Van Kleeck debate, but also in his answer to Bryson.  White answered:

If he didn’t, then that rape is an element of meaningless evil that has no purpose.

Hank Hanegraaff is the moderator and he asks White, “So what is your answer then?”  In other words, White wouldn’t answer the question.  No problem for White fans.  This is James White.  Whatever he says will count as an answer.

White then says to Hanegraaff, “I’m trying to go to scripture,” to which Hanegraaff replies, “What is the answer to the question that he just asked?”  And so finally White does answer the question.  To the question of, “When a child is raped, is God responsible?  Did he decree that rape?”  James White answers:

Yes, because, if not, then it is meaningless and purposeless.  And though God knew it was going to happen, he created without a purpose.  That means God brought the evil into existence, knowing it was going to exist, but for no purpose, no redemption, nothing positive, nothing good.

God Does Not Decree or Determine Moral Evil or the Rape of a Child

White, Hanegraaff, and Bryson say much more in this debate (which was in 2003), but White point blank says that God determined evil, even the determination of a rape of a child.  This was the stunning admission by the Calvinist, James White.

Is this true about God?  No.  It perverts a scriptural view of the sovereignty of God.  God is sovereign, but sovereignty means He is also sovereign over His sovereignty.  The word sovereignty isn’t in the Bible, but the doctrine is there.  However, we should allow God to define what His sovereignty is.  God allows or causes everything that happens.  I don’t agree with Calvin’s, Bignon’s, or White’s view of God’s sovereignty.  It doesn’t match up with what God says about Himself in scripture.

Someone asked Flowers, if God determines all moral evil, can God still be a good God?  I don’t want to answer that question.  I think, it isn’t God though.  This is just a hypothetical that could quote me as saying that God isn’t a good God.  God is a good God though.  If that was God, which it isn’t, then He would not be good.  I don’t see a God, who would determine or decree moral evil, as being good.  God allows evil.  He doesn’t determine or decree it.

If you say, like White, that God determines or decrees everything, then you also, like White does, must say that God determines or decrees evil, including the rape of a child.  Scripture does not teach this kind of determinism.  God determines things, it’s true, but not moral evil.