If anyone has read the works of John Piper, Jonathan Edwards or any mainstream Calvinist you know that they are committed to the view that God’s sovereignty means God has exhaustively decreed every act of men (and demons), such that nothing has occurred that God did not first conceive of, determine and render certain through an irresistible decree. This would entail both good and evil (See here if that is news to you.) Moreover they are committed to the view that God’s decrees are always right and good and thus God’s decrees can do no wrong because all things are decreed in order to cause the goodness and glory of God to shine more brightly.

Given that John Piper is currently recognized to be Calvinism’s most notable proponent of this view I’m going to call it: “Piper’s Theodicy.”  That being said let’s breakdown Piper’s Theodicy in the form of a deductive syllogism for greater clarity.

1)   Every decision of every person and every act throughout world history is the effect in time of what God specifically and determinatively decreed in eternity past in order to manifest his glorious goodness.

2)   God can never do wrong or evil against anyone through any of his decrees because He is good.

3)   Therefore, everything that God decrees is right and good from his perspective.

Before we begin dissecting the incomprehensible horror and moral bankruptcy of Piper’s Theodicy, let’s first imagine a scenario in which the whole world of humanity was color-blind to red. What we perceive to be red and call red is actually interpreted as another shade of green in our minds—but we don’t know it. We assume we are rightly discerning the color red but in reality it is being misinterpreted as a lighter shade of green. The question that naturally arises is, if everyone perceives the same shade of green to be red, how do we know it’s actually not the color red we are seeing? Another way to put it would be, if the whole world is color-blind to red then whose perception or observation transcends our color spectrum to tell us our observation of red is mistaken and deficient?

Enter God. God informs us that what we have long considered to be red in our perception isn’t correspondent with true red, but instead has been misinterpreted. In actuality what we thought was red was simply another shade of green that the whole world has subjectively labeled as red as a contrast to other colors—including the darker hue of green we traditionally thought of as green.

And of course who can argue with God? Therefore we would all have to concede that we don’t actually know what the color red looks like. All our reference points for shades of red are actually being misinterpreted in our minds as shades of green. This would naturally entail that the color red never truly existed in our experiential understanding of the world because everything we perceived to be red was being misinterpreted as a shade of green.

This simple illustration is somewhat analogous to where Piper’s Theodicy would lead us in terms of qualifying good and evil in objective categories. Whether he admits it or not, Piper is saying that what you morally perceived to be shades of evil (red) on this earth were actually shades of good (green) all along, in virtue of the fact that God has decreed all events as good and purposeful puzzle-pieces that find their rightful place in his grand masterpiece of self-aggrandizing glory. But that would mean that from God’s perspective (the only one that really counts) there has never truly been an act of pure, moral evil done against anyone—just shades of good that were serving God’s good decrees. Any act of moral evil that one can call to mind and put forward as an example must necessarily be subsumed under the exhaustive category of “all things” that Piper insists God sovereignly intended and decreed for the good of his glory.

Thus unbeknownst to us there has never been an actual contrast of good because what we thought was a contrast to good—evil—was just a construct of our minds born out of a subjective dislike of certain events stemming from our failure to envision how they fit into God’s meticulously constructed, cosmic self-portrait—which of course must be good because God is good. Therefore the only way something can truly be rendered evil is if some “bad” event occurred in the universe that God did not decree—but that’s just silly nonsense for a Calvinist to consider because they insist it’s literally impossible that anything in this universe could have occurred independent of God’s prior conception, intention and origin of decree! Consequently there is nothing in this universe that could truly be said to be objectively evil.

Does this all sound radically bogus? That would be because it is. But is it a bogus mischaracterization of Piper’s, Calvinistic logic? Not in the least. It fits it like a glove—foul smelling and rank though it may be.

But it gets worse. Given Piper’s theo-logical analysis of God’s sovereignty, it must be asked as to whether or not God himself is morally “color-blind?” Does the “red hue” of evil even exist for God? Can God render or judge anything as being objectively evil from his perspective, or are all such alleged, evil events merely shades of good within his own perception?

Assuming the logic of Piper’s Theodicy it is hard to see why this would not be so. For if God’s decrees “can do no wrong” to anyone, then it follows they can only do right to people.

And if everything that occurs in the world was meticulously and purposefully decreed by God, not for evil ends, but to serve and fulfill his glorious, good ends—then it logically follows that everything that happened in our world was actually overridingly good! Evil never really existed! (Nor can it exist in the Calvinist scheme, as we will see).

From our limited, fallible vantage point some occurrences may be perceived as being wrong and evil, but from God’s vantage point it is not wrong or evil—just shades of good serving his good ends. Moreover nothing can really be said to be unfortunate or tragic—because it’s all been conceived of and purposed by God! Thus in the grand scheme of things all things are fortunate. All things are intended. All things are good. All things are right. All things are purposeful. All things are decreed to serve the good of God’s glory.

In Piper’s worldview we are slaves of God’s glory—our value consists in nothing else. We exist only as objects to be manipulated and used as pieces fitted together to gloriously display the cosmic, divine will—nothing else really matters.

Now perhaps you are a Piper disciple and you can’t possibly imagine that Piper’s Theodicy requires the above conclusion; but it’s really not all that difficult to see.  For if:

1) Every desire, choice and action of men and woman have their ultimate, conceptual origin and intentionality in the decretive will of God as Piper insists,

2 ) And if God never does evil or wrong in decreeing anything, and thus can only decree that which is good,

3) Then it logically follows that evil itself is simply an illusionary perception in our minds from not “having all the facts” as to how God purposed everything for the good of his glory.

Accordingly evil, as an objective moral category in the universe, simply disappears! It literally does not exist. If it did—what would be an example? Did divine goodness conceive of it, intend it and decree it? If so, then how is it evil in any ontological sense from God’s perspective?

Piper essentially admits this when he astonishingly parrots Edwards who first explained:

“God doesn’t will sin as sin or for the sake of anything evil; though it be his pleasure so to order things, that he permitting, sin will come to pass; for the sake of the great good that by his disposal shall be the consequence.” [1]

So there you have it. God’s universal decrees of sin are divested of their sinfulness because God doesn’t “will sin as sin.” Apparently these divinely decreed actions and events for sin and evil to “come to pass for the sake of the great good” only take on an aura of sinfulness and evil when their predetermined emergence along the stream of human history arrives and they suddenly “pop” into being via the wills of individuals determined to commit them. The key point not to be missed is that when God decreed each and every sin, it was not “sin as sin” but rather a neutered means to an end. The end of course being God’s glory… or at least Piper’s bizarre and twisted notion of God’s glory.

As alluded to earlier, Piper’s persuasion results in evil becoming just a construct in our minds we have created to protest against what we perceive to be undesirable events. Little do we know that all events—including rape, murder, child abuse, adultery, abortion and pornography—are actually good.

Why?

Because the same God that Piper’s Theodicy insists decreed who will be victimized and raped and who will grow up to be the perpetrating rapist, is the same good God that cannot “will sin as sin” and can “do no wrong against anyone” through any of his decrees. [2]

So given Piper’s theo-logic it follows inescapably that from God’s perspective all alleged evils of this world are ontologically grounded in the good of God’s decrees—thus ultimately rendering them good and absolving them of evil. In Piper’s construct not only does evil not exist—it can’t exist!

It has already been stated, but it bears repeating. If Piper were to disagree with the aforementioned conclusion, then it must be asked of him, what is an example of an act of pure evil?

No matter what he comes up with, Piper is forced to concede that such an act of evil was not just conceived by divine goodness, but was determinatively rendered certain through an irresistible decree of God for the good of his glory.

Piper would agree that God is the paradigm of all good. God is divine goodness. But if all evil is decreed by divine goodness for the sake of divine goodness, what then is left for Piper to point to as a contrast to divine goodness?

Piper’s key error is assuming that all acts of moral evil are intended acts by the divine will. Rather than stop at the biblical notion that God can exploit evils that he neither desired nor willed, and can use unintended evil to bring about good, Piper goes one step further and says God intended and purposed all evil for the purpose of intending good—thus divesting evil of evil and rendering all acts morally unintelligible at best and morally equivalent at worst.

[1] http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/is-god-less-glorious-because-he-ordained-that-evil-be

[2] Piper rightly tries to make the point that God can do no wrong to anyone with any of his decrees, but Piper wrongly tries to couch this truth into his overall, Calvinist narrative that God has unconditionally decreed all things— including all suicide bombings. His latter point is an extreme extrapolation based on unproven assumptions. See: http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-made-it-ok-for-god-to-kill-women-and-children-in-the-old-testament