Answer:
Yes I know of Dr Sproul. Heard some of his lectures in college many years ago and I have a book of his on my shelf. He’s a very good teacher and writer. He’s strong on classical apologetics and is an ardent Calvinist. The book I have of his, is called, “NOT A CHANCE” and deals with the problems of pure materialism. It’s a very good read.
I would say our teachings are mostly similar on all the major points of Christian doctrine. I doubt there would be any point of our statement of faith (http://ac3.org/n/content/What_We_Believe) that he would have an issue with.
Where he would have an issue, is with the style of many current Christian ministries, probably ours as well. He recently has been on a campaign to warn people about the dangers of “seeker churches” and what his friend Michael Horton calls, “Christless Christianity”. I share some of his concerns, but not all. He’s concerned with the growing ignorance of basic biblical truths of many who call themselves Christians. I share that concern. And he’s disturbed by a trend among some in evangelical churches (called Emergents) who, in an effort to make peace with other movements and religions and to partner in common areas of concern like compassion projects, risk losing the distinctiveness of the gospel. I share that concern as well.
But I dislike his habit of broadly condemning large categories of believers without, it seems to me, intimate knowledge of those ministries, or subtleties within big categories. Also, I can't accept his Calvinistic view of God's Sovereignty which is a sort of, "maximum control" type of view. RC has written, 'if there is so much as an atom in God's universe out of God's control, then God is not really God." So that's where we part company. I don’t believe that Scripture teaches that God controls everything - sin, for example. If God controls everything, he controls even the formation of the intent and will for follow through on all sin – which can only mean that God himself is a sinner.
Instead, I think God has delegated some control, while retaining his place as the most powerful Being in the Universe and gets the last say always – which is what sovereignty means to me. I've observed that a strict Calvinist and strict atheists unwittingly have a lot in common: they both reject freedom and are determinists. The atheist believes the universe is in lock down to physical laws and moral freedom is an illusion. The Calvinist believes the universe is in lock down to God's will and moral freedom is an illusion.
The basic upshot of such a view, I feel, is that not only are humans reduced to robots but God can't help but be made out as a sort of cosmic bully, playing with toys for ends that are not explicitly good or just, selecting some of us to eternal hell and others to eternal reward, quite apart from anything they could or could not do.
If you take the whole of Scripture, however, it's clear that the reason God speaks of judgment is for the simple reason that we are accountable for free choices that run COUNTER to God's will. Why would God hold us accountable for our actions if in the long run, he himself CAUSED those actions? And if faith can’t be freely exercised by a person, then A) why are we Christians called to carry out the appeal to people to choose Christ, and B) why does God condemn those without this faith?
Unbending Calvinists have taken the wonderful good news of God’s grace – the idea that God saves us through no good works of our own – and at times risk implying some very bad news: namely, that God is the cause of evil and capricious and fickle and random in picking whom he saves and who he doesn’t save. Obviously, RC Sproul doesn’t believe that God is evil or fickle. So my problem with his teaching isn't that he explicitly charges God with wrong or fickleness or injustice, but that his teaching naturally leads an open questioner to that very conclusion. Your experience with Sproul and that of others proves my point.
It would be one thing if Scripture preached with a unanimous voice about fatalism and determinism. But it clearly doesn't. Time and again, while God is painted as the most powerful Being in the universe, with power to do anything, he doesn't use this power at all times in all places. Humans have free will and responsibility and choice - in fact it's a CENTRAL idea in Scripture. Central to creation, when God says to Adam, "of any tree in the Garden you are FREE to eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat." It's central to the law, when God says in Deut 30:19 "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now CHOOSE life..." And it's central to redemption, when Jesus says in Rev 3:20 "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and OPENS the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me."
Does Scripture give a central place to God's influence and God's power? Certainly! But Calvinists like Sproul take the Scriptural statements about the fallenness of man and God gifting us faith, and God drawing people to himself to mean that we can have NO partnership in that process at all. To admit that we have some role, is, in the mind of a strict Calvinist, to set up a system of works which denies God's grace and steals glory from him alone... by giving the creature some role in his own salvation.
It seems to me that some Calvinism (including Sproul) is guilty of "guru bible reading". That is, the habit of finding a favorite Bible writer and seeing everything else in Scripture through the lenses of that "guru", instead of letting all authors speak with their own voice. For Calvinists, the guru is Paul. And their Pauline lenses tend to make them insist that certain sections of Scripture must be promoted above others. But we must not interpret one verse in violation of all the others. If we took Paul’s talk of God’s sovereignty in Romans 9:16-24 as being the last word on the gospel, through which we must see every other statement about faith and freedom - we might all be Calvinists! Those verses are the exposition of God's unchallenged will in salvation par excellence. However, even inside of Paul, even inside the same letter to the Romans(!), we keep reading and find things are not that simple. For in Romans chapter 10 all the emphasis is on OUR choice (Romans 10:13) in salvation rather than God's choice. (And there's a great case to be made that the election of Chapter 9 is national, NOT individual and that Paul's own conclusion of his argument in that chapter [vs 30-32], reveals his larger point is that God is not bound to continue to favor the Jews just because he picked them earlier.) I think the danger is in wanting to systematize the Gospel into a cut and dried formula and deny any mystery that lives between the twin truths of God’s sovereignty and human free will.
Sproul is correct to suggest that God gifts humans with the ability to believe (Eph 2:8,9), and that if God doesn’t draw a sinner, he doesn’t come to faith (John 6:44). However, this drawing is not random or selective. He draws ALL since God is “not willing that ANY should perish” and he is "near to each one of us". Turn to Jesus and we read that “many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt 22:14) – which, in the context of the parable he tells, means clearly that God’s invites everyone to his salvation (the expected AND the unexpected, the insiders AND the outsiders)… Therefore, His drawing is not random, but universal. Those that respond to the Kingdom invitation, however, will be few. They are therefore called the elect. They are the chosen… because God picked them according to Paul, but according to Jesus teaching, because they picked God by responding to his invitation. Sproul would likely tell you that in instances that Scripture clearly shows God changing his mind, responding to our responses, that this is mere euphemism. So while Sproul dislikes ministries that don't take God's Word seriously, he is often guilty in my opinion, of spiritualizing away Scripture that doesn't agree with his air tight Reformed view.
I'm content to let this be an intramural debate where well meaning Christian teachers wrestle with the Scriptural record. My concern is when people like you hear Sproul and begin to think there is really no love in God at all. That would be tragic for the Bible says, "God is love." My only other concern is when individual Christians respond to Calvinistic teaching with less evangelistic fervor. A logical corollary of thinking that God makes me choose him, is that we have no part to play either as good news spreaders or good news hearers - so why worry about it? Historically in some streams of Christian tradition where fatalism creeps in, evangelism does functionally shut down. Now, the Calvinist must believe in his responsibility to evangelize because he takes the Bible seriously, however, he has no intellectual resources to sustain that belief.
So again, this could be a relatively intellectual debate, UNTIL it starts to affect our praxis. Think of the ardent atheist who may tell you that he believes in morals and "being good"... but without robust intellectual resources to sustain that belief, the implication of his atheism is always pulling him toward an inescapable conclusion: morals are an illusion. Likewise, the strict Calvinist would never charge God with sin, or reject the need for evangelism in the church (Sproul himself has led many hundreds to Christ!), but he gives no intellectual foundation to reject that exact conclusion in his hearers.
At the end of the day, I do not begrudge Sproul speaking so highly of God’s power and control and sovereignty - I too believe in God's omnipotence. But I simply note that no one can live intellectually consistently within a strict fatalism. Sproul himself, acts, moves, chooses, teaches, as if his actions were deeply significant. His impressive life of ministry and track record of personal integrity proves how seriously he takes all his choices. So along with my great respect for the man, I take solace in knowing even he does not live as if God does all the choosing and we do none - even if his teaching may imply that to some.
