Recently, a well-meaning “New Calvinist” (more on this nomenclature in part 2) posted some very blunt language on Twitter about the relationship between divine sovereignty and various ways in which people suffer in this world. He wrote that if you experienced X trauma (fill in the blank) God ordained it. Predictably and understandably, this provoked a strong reaction.

There are several threads here that should be unwound and addressed separately. First, the problem of evil is great and amateur (i.e., lay) “Reformed” Twitter is perhaps not the best place to learn how to think about it. Second, the Scriptures do teach divine sovereignty and providence but they also teach human agency and the relationship between the two (providence and human agency) is more mysterious than the provocative tweet allowed. Third, much of what passes for “Reformed” on social media is not. This point is significant because, in our age, for reasons that I will explain in part 2, many assume that anyone who affirms divine sovereignty represents Reformed theology and the Reformed churches. That is simply not the case. Fourth, there are important pastoral issues when dealing with the problem of evil, divine sovereignty, and human agency. Here Psalm 73 (and many other places in Scripture help us). In this first part I will address the first two of these issues.

Why is evil a “problem”? Why is it improper to speak the way the way our predestinarian Twitter friend spoke? For one thing, Scripture typically speaks rather differently. God is never presented as the “author of sin.” In 1561, Belgic Confession art. 13 the Reformed churches spoke to this problem directly:






For that reason we reject the damnable error of the Epicureans, who say that God involves himself in nothing and leaves everything to chance (emphasis added).

The Reformed churches confess that the relationship between God and evil is a mystery. We reject any attempt to resolve the mystery. We are not rationalists. We refuse to go beyond what Scripture says. We affirm both that God is sovereign and nothing happens outside his fatherly care and that human beings are morally responsible agents who, within God’s providence, choose without coercion (any external force) to do what they do. They are culpable for those choices. We also reject the pagan notion that the world is random and chaotic. We speak of God permitting certain things.

During the Arminian controversy, the Remonstrants (who objected to the doctrine of the Belgic Confession but who wished to remain in the Reformed churches) caricatured Reformed theology in order to criticize it. They consistently ignored the view held by most of the churches and theologians, namely, that Scripture presents God as electing and passing by created and fallen humans. This view is known as “infralapsarianism” because the decrees of election and reprobation (passing by) are considered within (infra) the fall. The minority view, “supralapsarianism” held that the elect and reprobate are considered as potentials, not as created and not as fallen. The Synod of Dort confessed the infralapsarian view.

Often, however, when evangelicals encounter a doctrine of divine sovereignty it is not in the context of the Reformed church. Increasingly it is online and it is from, to put it bluntly, amateurs, who quite unaware of the history, theology, and grammar of the Reformed churches. These amateurs are not aware of the distinction between supra- and infralapsarianism. They are unaware of the language of divine permission. They are unaware of the Reformed doctrine of second causes, e.g., that of Westminster Confession 3.1, where we confess


We confess that the liberty (freedom from coercion) and contingency (might happen, might not happen) relative to human choice is real. This liberty and contingency is “established” by divine providence—the world is not “chaos and old night” (Milton, Paradise Lost)—but God operates, mysteriously by what Christian theologians have called “concursus,” or a working together of the divine and human agencies.

The Reformed churches and orthodox Reformed theologians (as distinct from the so-called “New Calvinists” or the Young, Restless, and Reformed) speak this way because Scripture speaks this way. Consider the lament of Asaph in Psalm 73. The Psalm is in five parts: blessing, complaint, lament, confession, and doxology It begins by blessing God, “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” Asaph turns quickly, however, to his complaint that the wicked do not merely seem to prosper in this world. They actually do prosper. In the wealthy West, most of us have so much food that we have to fight the battle of the bulge. In the ancient world, however, it was not so. There was not much of what we know as the “middle class.” There were wealthy people who could afford to eat enough to become fat and everyone else. Too often, according to Asaph, the wicked were fat and happy. They were getting away with abuse and corruption. They live easily and no one does anything about it. Injustice is real.

So, it seemed to Asaph that godliness and righteousness seems futile. What good does it do to keep one’s heart clean and to obey God’s law? He is “stricken and smitten” every morning. He confesses that his feet almost “slipped” (v. 2).

Suddenly, however, Asaph had a turning point and it was not where we might suspect. His perspective on the reality of the suffering of the righteous did not come when he engineered a social justice movement within Israel. His perspective changed when he entered the “sanctuary of God.” It was in corporate worship that he saw a more ultimate reality, the one behind the reality that the evil get away with it in this life. He saw the end of the wicked. He saw that where they were standing—in contrast to where Asaph stands—is slippery, that they will be destroyed. They will be terrified when the Lord “rouses” himself, as it were—Asaph speaks existentially, using an anthropomorphism, a literary device, a figure of speech whereby human qualities (sleeping, awakening) are imputed to God to make a point.

At that moment the evil were not changed but Asaph was. His heart was pierced. He realized that he had been thinking not like a believer but like an animal. He wanted animal (“brutish”—ESV) revenge on the wicked in this life. He confesses his ignorance of God. He lifts his eyes to heaven and says the most remarkable thing: “I am continually with you, you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will receive me to glory” (vv. 23–24; ESV). Do not let the liberals and the critics tell you that the Old Testament believers had no idea of heaven or eternal life. They most certainly did.

Indeed, in the last section of the Psalm, Asaph has turned his eyes entirely to the Lord, where he finds real help.


Asaph freely acknowledges three truths: God is sovereign and governs all things; that his ways are mysterious to us; that human agency is real. The wicked choose freely, without compulsion to do what they do to the innocent and they are morally responsible before God for their free choices and acts. God is in charge of it all. That is why Asaph complains and laments. His underlying assumption is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who led Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground, who hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 9:16) could have arranged things differently.

When he came face to face with God, in worship, he also realized his finitude. The Reformed have a saying, “the finite is not capable of the infinite” (finitum non capax infiniti). It means that God is God and we are but creatures. It means, as the Lord revealed to Isaiah, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:9; ESV).

If we follow Scripture, we recognize that it was we and not God who sinned. We, not God, plunged humanity into death and corruption. Therefor we rightly hold sinful humans accountable for their wickedness but we humbly submit to God’s mysterious providence and turn our minds to him and to the judgment where he shall make all things right. Until then, we recognize that human justice is, at best, imperfect and that, until then, too often the wicked really do prosper in this world.

Next time: Who speaks for “the Calvinists”?

—R. Scott Clark, Escondido

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