I have
written a great deal against Reformed theology, such as:
One “buzzword” that Calvinists use is that of “sovereignty.” For many Calvinists, for
God to be truly sovereign means that he decreed everything, including being
active in election to salvation (I won’t address reprobation as that will lead
to addressing the infra- vs. supra-lapsarian debate) and even all sinful
actions (albeit with the qualifier that God is off the hook as he decrees also
the secondary/instrumental means of sinful actions, etc).
However,
this is an abuse of the term and the concept in the Bible, and fortunately,
there are some Reformed apologists willing to admit this. One such Calvinist is
Paul D. Miller in his essay Is
‘Sovereign’ the Best Descriptor for God?. The entire essay should be
consulted, but as Miller writes at the beginning which is rather apropos:
What does it mean to say that God is
sovereign? The refrain has become so common, almost clichéd, in Reformed
writing and preaching that it sometimes slips away from the reader or listener
without lodging meaning in the mind. Worse, we typically hear the phrase to
mean something it doesn’t. When Christians affirm that “God is sovereign,” they
often mean “God is in control.” Paul Tripp, for example, wrote in his excellent
book Lost in the Middle that “God truly is sovereign . . . there is no
situation, relationship, or circumstance that is not controlled by our heavenly
Father.”
The problem is that the English word
sovereignty does not mean control. The U. S. government is sovereign within
American territory, but that doesn’t mean the government controls everything
within American borders or causes all that happens.
