I posted the following last week while you were out of town:
I quote from Palmer's The Five Points of Calvinism:
Foreordination means God's sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe. Nothing in this world happens by chance. God is in back of everything. He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen. He is not sitting on the sidelins wondering and perhaps fearing what is going to happen next. No, He has foreordained everything "after the counsel of his will" (Eph 1:11): the moving of a finger, the beating of a heart, the laughter of a girl, the mistake of a typist - even sin. (See Gen 45:5-8;Acts 4:27-28; and chap. 6 of this book. pages 24-25
As I said in an earlier post today. I don't really have a problem with Calvinism as explained by Phillip Johnson. In addition to that, I think I have been VERY CLEAR that I have serious issues with hyper-Calvinism. I am not saying hyper-Calvinists are not Christians, nor that they are being dishonest in their beliefs; I just disagree with some of their positions.
As you can see from the direct quote above, Palmer most certainly did state that God foreordained sin. You have said you have a copy of his book so you can confirm it for yourself. I think part of the communication problem may be indirectly related to the fact that you did not grow up in a hyper-Calvinist environment and may simply not been exposed to the unBiblical principles it espouses. This is, of course, no fault of your own.
For many years during my marriage, I attempted to discover why my ex never seemed to experience the joy and happiness that should be associated with being a Christian, including doing a lot of reading and study. This included the reading of Palmer's book. It explained a lot to me. As you can see from Johnson's article, he even mentions the CRC as being hyper-Calvinistic, in general. Certainly that does not mean that all congregations within that denomination were taught or preached hyper-Calvinism. Certainly some Congreations and ministeres got it right, but for Jean to say that there is not nor has been an element of hyper-Calvinism is clearly and effectively controverted by Johnson.
As a highly esteemed Christian apologist, and an admitted 5-point Calvinist, Dr. Phillip Johnson's writings cannot be easily dismissed. I think there can be reasonable disagreement regarding his fifth (least extreme) level and maybe even a bit into the fourth level, but it is clearly fair to say that a Calvinist who espouses levels 1, 2, or 3 is certainly a hyper-Calvinist.
Steve, I have in no way been trying to toy you, although I would have to be honest and say I have with some others. I have honestly tried to explain from a reasonable and logical basis why I think SOME Calvinists have so distorted what Calvin both wrote and intended that even knowledgable Calvinists recognize it as being unBiblical. Please don't by any stretch of the imagination think that I am defending the Arminian view point, especially the ones presented by extreme Arminians any more so that what I think can fairly be stated as misrepresentations of Arminianism by SOME Calvinists.
This whole debate, aside from being an interesting intellectual exercise does little to spread the Gospel. Jesus never spoke in such abstract and obstruse language, and I think as Christians, we should keep that foremost in our mind.
As simple-minded as Arminian theology may seem to be at times, the message is plain enough that anyone who hears the Gospel devoid of the Calvinism-Arminianism disputed can come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Isn't that the most important thing?
Look at the bright side, you can consider me to be a Philip Johnson five-point Calvinist, even though I prefer to go by the name 'Christian'.