John Piper and Divine Schizophrenia: Has Piper Solved Calvinism’s Biggest Problem?

According to some theologians, God has already decided who will believe in Jesus. To his chosen individuals (the elect), God extends a special grace that draws them irresistibly to saving faith. All others (the reprobate) are consigned to eternal damnation. This particular view of predestination is often called Calvinism. In a discourse entitled, Predestination Calmly Considered, John Wesley summarizes the biggest problem confronting Calvinists: “How will you reconcile reprobation with…God’s willingness that all should be saved?” (20). 

The Bible does indeed affirm that God desires all to be saved. In Ezekiel 33:11, for example, God solemnly declares that he takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” but would prefer instead that the wicked person “turn from his way and live.” In Matthew 23:37, Jesus says to Jerusalem, “How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, yet you were not willing!” In 1 Timothy 2:4, Paul asserts that God “wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In 2 Peter 3:9, Peter describes God as “not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance” (HCSB). How are such passages to be reconciled with Calvinism? 

In several publications over his career, John Piper has attempted to give an answer. Piper is an influential pastor and theologian who has proven to be one of today’s most passionate and articulate defenders of Calvinism. In this brief article, I will examine the two different ways in which Piper has attempted to answer Wesley’s challenge.  

Piper’s First Proposal: Almighty Wrath

In a book entitled, Does God Desire All to Be Saved? (2013), Piper insists that “the simultaneous existence of God’s will for all people to be saved and his will to choose some people for salvation unconditionally before creation is not a sign of divine schizophrenia” (13). Piper proposes that “God’s will to save all people is restrained by his commitment to the glorification of the full range of his perfections” (53). In other words, as Piper argued in an earlier publication, God’s will to save all people is restrained by “his great desire to manifest the full range of his character.” God’s perfect character includes not only mercy but also wrath, and according to Piper, God cannot sufficiently display his wrath if all are saved. Quoting Daniel Fuller, Piper asserts that it would be “impossible” for the elect “to share with God the delight he has in his mercy unless they saw clearly the awfulness of the almighty wrath from which his mercy delivers them.” Thus, according to Piper, God can “never … reveal to his creation certain aspects of his personhood” unless there exist “persons set for destruction on whom God can fulfill his will to demonstrate almighty wrath” (Justification of God, 187-88, 220).

Ironically, Piper’s argument is refuted by none other than Jonathan Edwards, Piper’s favorite theologian. In a discourse entitled, The Wisdom of God Displayed in the Way of Salvation, Edwards asserts, “The revenging justice of God is a great deal more manifested in the death of Christ, than it would have been if all mankind had been sufferers to all eternity,” and again, “The majesty of God appears much more in the sufferings of Christ than it would have done in the eternal sufferings of all mankind.” Edwards reasons, “If all mankind had stood guilty, and justice had called for vengeance upon them, that would not have been such a trial of the inflexibleness and unchangeableness of the justice of God, as when his own Son, who was the object of his infinite love, and in whom he infinitely delighted, stood with the imputation of guilt upon him.” Therefore, the “sufferings of Christ,” more than the “eternal sufferings of the wicked,” serve to impress “upon the minds of the spectators a sense of the dread majesty of God, and his infinite hatred of sin” (5.4).

I doubt very much that Piper would disagree with Edwards on this point. But if Edwards is correct, then Piper’s argument collapses. One cannot accept Edwards’ theology of the atonement and simultaneously claim that the damnation of the reprobate is necessary to manifest God’s wrath sufficiently. As Edwards argues, the elect will see nothing in the fires of hell that they did not see with greater clarity in the cross of Calvary. 

Piper’s Second Proposal: Free and Sovereign Grace

In a 2023 podcast, Piper addresses precisely the same question he tackled in his earlier publications: “If God desires all to be saved, why aren’t they?” This time, however, Piper gives a somewhat different answer. Piper again argues that God’s desire to save all is constrained by another desire, but Piper does not describe this other desire as God’s commitment to display his almighty wrath. Instead, Piper cites God’s commitment to glorify his “free and sovereign grace.” According to Piper, “God is more committed to glorifying his own free and sovereign grace than he is to saving all.” 

But how is the salvation of all contrary to the glorification of God’s freedom, God’s sovereignty, or God’s grace? How does saving sinners diminish his grace? How does choosing everyone undermine his sovereignty? How does accomplishing his desire veil his freedom? Piper seems to be suggesting that God wants to save all people but chooses not to save all people in order to demonstrate that he is free to do whatever he wants to do. Such an argument seems to me to be the theological equivalent of George Orwell’s famous “doublethink.” In Orwell’s dystopia, it was the “Ministry of Peace” that waged war and the “Ministry of Truth” that produced propaganda. In Piper’s theology, it is ultimately God’s “freedom” which prevents him from saving those he desires to save and God’s “sovereignty” which constrains his choice in election. 

Conclusion

Neither Piper’s appeal to God’s “almighty wrath” nor his appeal to God’s “free and sovereign grace” succeeds in answering the challenge posed by Wesley. If Edwards is right about the cross, then reprobation is not necessary for God to display his wrath. Furthermore, if God truly desires all to be saved, then reprobation hardly glorifies his freedom or his sovereignty. In the end, Piper is unable to absolve God of “divine schizophrenia.” Calvinism’s greatest problem remains. 

Murray Vasser is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wesley Biblical Seminary.

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