Calvinist John Piper is a fan of G.K. Chesterton, which is odd because Chesterton disdained Calvinism as a force that stifled true humanity. Piper writes:
Here’s the reason Chesterton’s bowshots at Calvinism do not bring me down. The Calvinism I love is far closer to the “Elfland” he loves than the rationalism he hates.
He would no doubt be baffled by my experience. For me the biggest, strongest, most beautiful, and most fruitful tree that grows in the soil of “Elfland” is Calvinism. Here is a tree big enough, and strong enough, and high enough to let all the paradoxical branches of the Bible live — and wave with joy in the sunshine of God’s sovereignty.
In the shade of this tree, I was set free from the procrustean forces of unbiblical, free-will presuppositionalism — the unyielding, alien assumption that without the human right of ultimate self-determination human beings cannot be accountable for their choices. When I walked away from this narrow, rationalistic, sparse tree, into the shade of the massive tree of Calvinism, it was a happy day. Suddenly I saw that this is what all the poetry had been about. This is the tree where all the branches of all the truths that men have tried to separate thrive.
William Watson Birch - scourge of all things that start with a "c" and end in "alvnist" - observes:
Does no one find odd the fact that Adam and Eve could make free will, self-determined choices in the Garden of Eden and yet God remained "sovereign"?
For me, the most absolutely astounding supposition of Calvinists -- deterministic Calvinists like John Piper -- is how eager they are to discard "free will" and "self-determination" and affirm that God decrees our so-called "choices." Though, I think, these alleged "choices" are only apparently genuine, since, in Calvinism, God has already predetermined what we shall do/choose/say/think.1 John Calvin writes that "men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction" (emphases added).2 Where is the fear and honor of God present in such an admission? Why not just admit that God is the only real sinner in the universe?
Calvin further admits, "Therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise, God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of his judgments."3 Such evil, in Calvinism, is committed according to God's predetermined plan, not by "bare permission": "If the binding and infatuation of Ahab is a judgment from God, the fiction of bare permission is at an end."4
Webster is right. Chesterton delighted in apparent paradoxes that demonstrated the cleverness of God. Thus, Chesterton took delight in the tension between God's apparent providential care for His creation and God's decision to give real freedom for His creation, for God's great cleverness in accomplishing His ends through the free actions of His creation. Chesterton had no time for those who would solve the tension by denying that it actually existed.
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