In the book of Amos we read of God and his lamentation over how, in spite of the divine judgment inflicted upon them, the people of Amos' time did not repent and return back to Him:
I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. (Amos 4:10)
Of course, this makes no real sense in light of Reformed theology unless one will posit that God is just play-acting and being deceptive. So, let me offer the Reformed Paraphrase Translation rendition of this verse:
I decreed in the eternal past to send you pestilence after the manner of Egypt for all the sins you committed, that I also decreed would infallible come to pass, all for my glory, but you are still responsible due to having compatibilist freedom: your young men have I slain with the sword, all to my eternal glory, and have taken away your horses, as they were totally depraved like you (and yes, I decreed all of that, too, infallible, and in the eternal past): and notwithstanding these means to bring you about to repentance, and the fact that I predestined and foreordained all secondary/instrumental means like these in the eternal past and your reactions thereto, I am going to act shocked and surprised to engage in play-acting (and also trick some future Open Theists like Gregory Boyd into thinking I can be upset at the free-will actions of humanity just so I can condemn them all to hell for doing that I predestined infallibly from the eternal past for my own glory).
Of course, in reality, the book of Amos presents many instances where God’s plans are frustrated due to their free-will actions in ways that are nonsense if Reformed theology were true:
For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live. But see not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. Seek the Lord and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. (Amos 5:4-6)
This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king's mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, "O Lord God, forgive me, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!" The Lord relented concerning this, "It shall not be," said the Lord. That is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, "O Lord God, cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!" Then the Lord relented concerning this, "This also shall not be," said the Lord God. (Amos 7:1-6, NRSV)
In this passage, God is said to have relented (alt. change his mind [Hebrew: נחם Greek: μετανοέω]) from punishing Israel due to the intercession of Amos (cf. Exo 32-33 for a similar event where, based on Moses’ intercession, God relents from His promise to destroy the Israelites due to their idolatry). The plain meaning of this passage is that God changed His mind and did not engage in play-acting nor can this be relegated to a mere anthropomorphism. As one recent author on God’s contingent foreknowledge wrote:
First, not only did the Lord change his mind, but he affirmed his intention by verbalizing it (e.g., “’This shall not be’ said the Lord”). Hence, if one attempts to fictionalize this event, one must also fictionalize Amos’ recording of God’s own words, which, as the saying goes, means that Amos put words into the mouth of God that God did not actually say.
Second, the narrative gives us two contrasting actions of God in a cause-and-effect relationship: (1) God has already formed the locusts to destroy the vegetation, and (2) God stops the forming of the locusts and does not destroy the vegetation. Hence, if an exegete were to claim that God’s verbalized decision that occurs in between the cause-and-effect sequence of event #1 and event #2 is fictional (i.e., the statement “’This shall not be’ said the Lord” did not occur), it essentially requires that the whole narrative becomes fiction. In other words, the Lord’s changing of mind is an integral part of the natural sequence of events in the historical narrative, without which the Lord’s initial forming of the locusts to eat the vegetation and Amos’ plea to stop the forming would be superfluous or causes without effects. (Robert Sungenis, The Immutable God Who Can Change His Mind, The Impassable God Who Can Show Emotion [State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2016], 37-8)
For more on the overwhelming exegetical and theological problems with Reformed theology, see:
