God's control is not a violent compulsion. God's turning a person's thoughts and actions to His purpose is not a violent compulsion.
I disagree and find the position utter sophistry.
He regulates all movements of men so they still have free will.
That is a more accurate reflection of scripture. Control and regulation are not identical terms, nor are they synonymous.
The Isaiah text on which Calvin is commenting is prophetic. Prophecy is deterministic. Non-prophecy is not necessarily so. Here's the verse Calvin is referencing,
Isaiah 10:15
Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood.
God is using a human analogy. The person chopping with the axe determines its blow. In using the analogy God is implicitly acknowledge the power of the human to influence inanimate objects, just as God is able to influence the human wielding the axe. Axes do not have any volition. Human axe-wielders do.
Calvin compares the human-centric volitionalist's interpretation, "By my power... I have contrived and accomplished these things," to Isaiah 42:8 and 48:11 in which God states He does not permit His glory to be given to another. The human who wields the axe cannot say he wields the axe over God or His glory. God does not permit that. The axe-wielding human can say he legitimately wields the inanimate axe over the inanimate wood being chopped. He cannot say he wielded the axe in defiance of God's will because God does not permit things He does not permit.
Prophetically God can make that man strike himself instead of the wood. This is especially so if God is doing so out of judgment. Prophecy is a unique form of direction that is not common to all of creation, all of history. It is the exception to the rule: history will go on but at a specified point in history I, God, will force something specific to happen. Neither is prophetic judgment to be conflated with salvation.
Pharaoh and Moses are the exceptions to the rule, not the rule. God can make Pharaoh be the guy who will lose his kingdom and all its wealth and He can make Moses the guy who would be raised in Pharoah's courts so as to be trained as a leader instead of a slave so that one day he would be forced back to Egypt AND God can acquiesce His own preferences to the slow of tongue man reluctant to believe God wholly and do ALL that God asks.
The problem occurring all too many times in the Arm v Cal debate is all-or-nothing-thinking. God can either be controlling everything or nothing.
That's not whole scripture. Scripture shows varying degrees of direct control and consenting agency of the creature.
So don't quote mine Calvin and imagine anything of substance has been accomplished. Calvin understood he was commenting on prophecy. His comments should not be overgeneralized beyond their scope or the application he intended.
And NOTHING I have ever posted should ever be construed to say God is incapable of controlling a person or in any way reluctant to do so. He can speak every poster in CARM out of existence if He so chooses and it would not matter one bit how much we protest. Our will on the matter would be meaningless.
No he very clearly says God regulates all movements of men there. But that is not all he has to say on the matter. And his words are very plain and concise.
More from calvin:
Let him, therefore, who would beware of such unbelief, always bear in mind, that there is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures,
who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed.
...
6. As we know that it was chiefly for the sake of mankind that the world was made, we must look to this as the end which God has in view in the government of it.
The prophet Jeremiah exclaims, “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walks to direct his steps,” (Jeremiah 10:23). Solomon again says, “Man’s goings are of the Lord: how can a man then understand his own way?” (Proverbs 20:24).
Will it now be said that man is moved by God according to the bent of his nature, but that man himself gives the movement any direction he pleases? Were it truly so, man would have the full disposal of his own ways.
To this it will perhaps be answered, that man can do nothing without the power of God. But the answer will not avail, since both Jeremiah and Solomon
attribute to God not power only, but also election and decree. And Solomon, in another place, elegantly rebukes the rashness of men in fixing their plans without reference to God, as if they were not led by his hand. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord,” (Proverbs 16:1). It is a strange infatuation, surely for miserable men, who cannot even give utterance except in so far as God pleases, to begin to act without him!
Scriptures moreover, the better to show that every thing done in the world is according to his decree, declare that the things which seem most fortuitous are subject to him. For what seems more attributable to chance than the branch which falls from a tree, and kills the passing traveler? But the Lord sees very differently, and declares that He delivered him into the hand of the slayer (Exodus. 21:13). In like manners who does not attribute the lot to the blindness of Fortune? Not so the Lord, who claims the decision for himself (Proverbs 16:33). He says not, that by his power the lot is thrown into the lap, and taken out, but declares that the only thing which could be attributed to chance is from him.
For we do not with the Stoics imagine a necessity consisting of a perpetual chain of causes, and a kind of involved series contained in nature, but we hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things, – that from the remotest eternity, according to his own wisdom,
he decreed what he was to do, and now by his power executes what he decreed. Hence we maintain, that by his providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and
wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined
