Friday, May 17, 2019

Paul D. Miller on the Abuse of God being "Sovereign" by his Fellow Calvinists


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.