The Logic of God’s Sovereignty

Calvinist theologian Robert Charles Sproul defines God's sovereignty this way:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;

David Heddle helpfully explains what Sproul means:

What ever happens either a) God decreed it (Let there be…) or b) God permitted it to happen, with no implied endorsement or divine sanction. God could have prevented it.

Heddle divides the set of all events into two equivalence classes:

• A: Events that occur because of direct intervention by God.
• B: Events that are permitted to occur. (Direct intervention would happen only if God did not permit the event to occur.)

We can now write Sproul's original definition of God's sovereignty as an implication statement:

God is sovereign => A or B

Sproul asks his seminary students whether they agree with that definition.  Those who agree with it (“affirm” the statement) he labels as theists, and those that disagree with it (“deny” the statement) he labels atheists.

It's not quite clear what Sproul means by a "denial" of the statement. Is the implication false, or just the consequent?  But Heddle does give us a clue:

Sproul argues that if there is something, anything that happened outside of God’s decree and his permissive will—then God is not sovereign.

If we parse that, we realize that that there's a third equivalence class:

• C: Events that happen that are neither directly caused by God, nor given his permission to occur.

Equivalence class C is simply the set complement of the union of the equivalence classes A and B. This allows us to write it in the form of an implication:

C => God is not sovereign

This is simply the contrapositive of the original implication. They are logically equivalent, so affirming one is the same as affirming the other.

If subset C is empty, the implication tells us nothing interesting about God's sovereignty, so we can ignore that case.  So Heddle is saying that if subset C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. Yes, that is indeed true; that's what Sproul's implication meant. There is no room for belief here, so it's not clear what Sproul is asking his students. If the implication is true (and that's what Sproul is asserting), then the contrapositive is true, and so if C is non-empty, then God is not sovereign. QED. But Sproul is making a distinction between theists and atheists: what is the distinction?

I think the distinction Sproul is making is this. If you're a theist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B

If you're an atheist, then you believe that:

God is sovereign => A or B or C

In his model, you're an atheist if you believe that some events can occur that God hasn't permitted. What this means is easier to see when the implication is written in its contrapositive form:

not (A or B or C) => God is not sovereign

The antecedent is false (the union of A, B, and C is the entire set, so its complement is empty), which means that whatever happens in the universe has no bearing on God's sovereignty.

One issue is that it's not clear whether Sproul believes subset C is empty. He says that if it's non-empty, then God would not be sovereign. But if subset C is empty, then he's not saying much of anything, since the issue of God's sovereignty doesn't come up. (It's like warning me that if I drink a bottle of dish soap, I'll get sick. Yes, that might be true, but since I have no desire to drink dish soap, the status of my health as a consequence is never an issue.)

The real problem with Sproul's schema, however, is that it's impossible to identify to which equivalence class an event belongs. There's no way for us, as non-privileged observers, to identify the set membership of an event.

Suppose I toss a ball into the air. The ball rises, slows down, and then falls back into my hand. Does this event happen because God made it so (it's an A event)? Or did this event happen because God permitted it to happen (it's a B event)?  We don’t know, nor can we know (because it’s a metaphysical question).  Why an event "really" happens is opaque to us, so the distinction between classes A and B is not meaningful. All we can do is construct models that allow us to make reliable predictions.

Finally, there is the matter of Sproul's idiosyncratic labels. He labels as atheists people we would normally consider theists, but who don't happen to believe that God is some kind of micro-manager, involving himself with every detail of the universe. (Once I put the battery in my watch, then my watch doesn't require much maintenance. Isn't that a good thing?)

Calling them atheists reminds of the quote ascribed to Abraham Lincoln:

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.

Most theists wouldn't call themselves atheists simply because they do not affirm Sproul's definition of God's sovereignty. All their denial means is that they're not Calvinists.