Calvinists are prone to characterize God as passive if he did not predetermine everything, but such a conclusion is misguided. God sovereignly chose to create a world populated with humans who are created in his image with libertarian moral freedom, thereby creating a world in which some events are determined by him (definite events), and he leaves some events to be the result of the choices of libertarian free beings (indefinite events). This requires that he knows every choice humans will make, which ones he will allow within his permissive grace, and which ones exceed his permission because they ultimately would thwart his coextensive creation/redemption plan and will; this continuous complex scenario does not present God as passive or allow such a perspective.
For clarity, the existence of libertarian moral freedom does not require that every choice in every situation is free, but only that some are. Consequently, when God or someone else overrides a person’s free will, the person does not lose his free will. He only loses it for the choice that was overridden, and he is not responsible for that choice.
The Extensivist perspective (my perspective that rejects the exclusive particulars of Calvinism and other determinist perspectives) includes God sovereignly and actively choosing certain people to fulfill specific evil events because he knew they would freely choose to act evilly, such as Judas. Judas was chosen by God to fulfill his dastardly deeds because he freely desired to do so. Given the evil of fallen mankind, I suspect many could have met the required criterion to do what Judas did, but God chose one out of the many.
For example, if Jesus had desired to choose one of the Pharisees, Scribes, or Sadducees to fulfill the betrayal instead of Judas, does anyone doubt that there were several who would have done so, and even more were available among the entire Jewish population who would have thought similarly to Judas if chosen by God to serve in Judas’s place, as also illustrated by Scripture’s reference to the Jews in John 6 (a categorization of those who opposed Jesus). Specifically, determinism was not necessary for Judas to commit his betrayal of Jesus, or to find someone to act evilly in Judas’s stead if he did not exist or God desired such for his own purposes.
God actively chose what he would permit with every person’s exercise of their free will and when, if needed, he would override their free will (as he did with Pharaoh, King David, and Nebuchadnezzar). For example, Christ chose Judas to serve a purpose, and he chose how, where, and when to expose him to others. He chose the time frame of the betrayal, whether to involve other willing participants, whom they would be out of the vast multitude of the willing (Jewish leaders, temple police, Roman soldiers, or Roman leaders like Pilate and Herod) had Christ chosen another for the treachery. Additionally, Christ chose when and how to send Judas to fulfill his betrayal. Thus, in this scenario, as well as trillions of others, he was impressively active and nowhere passive. The scripture is replete with events that include both the acts of libertarian moral freedom and God determining certain aspects (Gen 2; Gen 20:1-7). See my book, If Only You Would Ask, chapter seven.
Considering a libertarian free world requires the sovereign God of Scripture to be anything but passive. He had to choose to create the world out of all the possible worlds, then create it, know every choice libertarian beings would make and the sequence of events each choice would entail, multiplied trillions of times over, and govern such a world so that people make most decisions in which they could have chosen differently without violating the limits of his permissive will.
Such requires a God who can maintain mankind having libertarian moral freedom while also not allowing anyone to thwart his ultimate will with choices going beyond what he will permit; that governance entails that he not only knows every choice and what it entails, but he knows every choice, or even what parts of choices, he will override (Gen 20:1–7) without overriding every choice of a person throughout his life.
Therefore, an incalculable number of possible and actualized events within his consciousness represents a comprehensive and intricately complex libertarian world in which he chose what to permit and what to override, and that requires far more activeness of God than a God who created an invariant noncomplex micro-determined world so that all that exists is determined and there are no contingencies—free acts of libertarian beings.
In comparison of these two views, God, in Calvinism, knows and governs by micro-determining every thought, word, act, event, and outcome, which, thereby, happens necessarily. In contrast, God, in Extensivism, knows and governs by his essential omniscience, which includes some chosen definite events (determined events that human choice does not affect and they happen necessarily), and by some chosen indefinite events (these are the result of libertarian free choices—contingencies—that are known by God and, therefore happen certainly, but they could have been different had the person chosen to act differently, which result God would have always known). Indefinite events resulting from the choices of libertarian free will beings are known as contingencies. In neither view is God passive, least of all in a world with libertarian free beings.
