A PROFOUND MYSTERY

This week I got into a little YouTube comment debate with a hard-core fan of John MacArthur who didn't like my criticism of MacArthur's Calvinism. 

My original comment was an attempt to point out how Calvinists tend to redefine the word "sovereign":

"There have been numerous earthly kings who were "sovereign". This never meant that they determined every last thought, word, and action taking place in their kingdom."

My comment sat undisturbed for a month and a half until user "Og Make Fire! Fire Good!" came along to call me out on my wrong thinking:

Og responded: "Acts 2:23. [Jesus was "handed over to you (Jews) by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross."] God determined the sinful acts of those men. And He will also hold them accountable. We may not understand it, but those are the facts."

This is a layman's description of what Calvinists call "compatibilism".  In my mind, it is THE central problem in their system of thought: If God is determining everything that happens in His world, then He is by definition the first cause behind all actions, including all sins. 

Take for example a murderer's impulse to pull the trigger. Like everything else in the cosmos, this act was decreed by God before the foundation of the world.

After decreeing every movement and thought of the murderer throughout his life, including firing the gun, the Calvinist's God still holds the murderer responsible, unleashing His judgment and wrath upon him. 

Yet, somehow the hands of this deterministic God are clean. He is innocent and holy. 

The question is: How can those two things be compatible? 

Shouldn't it really be the opposite? Shouldn't the determining God be held to account for the murder and the man who wielded the weapon (at God's irresistible direction) be considered innocent?

This is a profound mystery! 

Now, when I say "This is a profound mystery", I am being sarcastic, but in fact the Calvinists say the same thing, only in dead seriousness: "It is a profound mystery how God is perfectly innocent and the man is guilty of vile sin."  

As Og says, "We may not understand it, but those are the facts."

Perhaps it will not surprise you to learn that over the course of our exchange, I could not convince Og that his "facts" were utterly illogical. 

After all, if John MacArthur said it, it must be true.