Writing in
response to Ray Ortlund, Jr., “The Sovereignty of God: Case Studies in the Old
Testament,” an attempt to argue for the Reformed understanding of God’s
sovereignty, C. Gordon Olson wrote:
Critique of
Ray Ortlund, Jr. on Sovereignty
Ray Ortlund, Jr. surveyed some Old Testament
case studies to support a Calvinistic view of the sovereignty of God. His
treatment is badly flawed. First he quoted without specific comment five
passages as being “striking testimonies to God’s supremacy over us” (ex. 4:11;
Isa. 45:7; 63:17; 64:7-8; Lam. 3:37-38; Dan. 4:34-35). Since most Christians
believe in God’s supremacy over us, these passages are irrelevant to the issue.
The Isaiah 63-64 context speaks about the severity of God’s judgments on Israel
in language reminiscent of Paul in Romans 1, referring to God giving up the
heathen to sin. I is in this judgmental sense that God had made Israel wander
from His ways and hardened their hearts. It is not that God has sovereignty
reprobated individual Jews to hell. He has not made his point . . . Ortlund put
a deterministic spin on Psalm 139. Commenting on the verse 5 reference to God
hemming him in: “David is confessing his vivid awareness of God’s unrelenting
attentions bombarding the fortress of his soul from all sides. As a result, God
has David under his control, as the second line implies. All David can do is
yield.” Certainly we can agree that God is actively involved in the
circumstances and many details of David’s life, including Nathan’s confrontation
of his sin. But was this exhaustive in God determining that David would sin?
This is what Ortlund implied! Then in commenting on verse 14 he took the phrase
“your works” as a reference t the
unfolding of events in David’s life as being solely divine works. The
immediately preceding context, however, is a reference to God’s forming him in
his mother’s womb, so Ortlund is guilty of isogesis here. In verse 16, he focused
on the statement that David’s days were ordained or planned by God, they were
written in God’s book. This is the heart of the argument: “He means that his
life, considered not only as a whole but also right down to his daily
experience, was determined (what other word fits?) ahead of time” (p. 32).
Again, would Ortlund include David’s sins with their terrible consequences upon
the children of Israel in this? We should hope not! His discussion hinges upon
the meaning of yatzar in v. 16. He
didn’t examine this word (as he should have done), but BDB lists: “2b. Fig. for
frame, pre-ordain, plan (in divine purpose)” (p. 427). Yes, God has a general
plan for every believer’s days. The RSV uses “formed,” which may be on a target
since we can understand how our days are formed by God’s workings and ours. Would
he say that every detail of David’s life was a direct work of the Holy Spirit?
Even as Calvinistic a writer as R.C. Sproul acknowledges that there is a
synergism in the Christian life. Would Ortlund extrapolate this to also say
that the days of unbelievers’ lives are also pre-ordained? . . . Ortlund
tried to develop his view of sovereignty from the book of Jonah. Certainly God’s
sovereign dealings with man comes out clearly in this book, but not the
deterministic concept. Time and again God had to confront Jonah to move him to
even minimal obedience. But never did He work any “irresistible grace” on
Jonah. This is the pattern in God’s dealings with man over the ages—He has to
confront mankind (Cain, the pre-flood peoples, Israel, Christians today, etc.)
to bring about repentant faith and obedience. The book of Jonah saying nothing
about exhaustive control of humans. Indeed, did God in eternity past decree
Jonah’s disobedience? Ortlund then quoted Job 12:13-16 about how “God retains
ultimacy in all things.” He seems to imply that God is ultimately behind man’s
deceiving and being deceived, whereas Job’s point is more simply that the
deceiver and his victim are both in the hands of God, just as the song goes, “He’s
god the whole world in His hand.”
In any case, Ortlund’s whole discussion
misses the point! All the passages deal with God’s providence in the lives
of believers, not with God’s exhaustive control of all the events transpiring
in the whole world. Omnicausality was the unbiblical notion that
Genevan-influenced hyper-Calvinists got put into the Westminster Confession of
Faith, which came out of a politico-religious conference, after all. It is not
even essential to Calvin’s Calvinism, as Richard Muller claimed, was rejected
by Richard Baxter, and most importantly, has no basis in the one clause of one
verse (Eph. 1:11) which is claimed by its proponents. To conclude, Ortlund’s
discussion has no force against a mediate soteriology.
