A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

User avatar
darinhouston
Posts: 3112
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:45 am

A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by darinhouston » Thu Apr 06, 2017 6:06 pm

Si wrote: .

I don't see how we can say that there is one God who exists in three persons, without changing the definition of one so much that it is no longer one. But I believe in the Trinity. I don't think we have to be able to wrap our mind around every mystery and paradox that we find in scripture.

I just want to say, I am not taking a firm stance on this topic. I'm really just exploring the issue and putting my ideas to the test.
It's a man made paradox. The Bible doesn't make this as clear as our responsibility (implying a response ability) to believe or not to believe. Like compatabilism, this is aN unnecessary and man made or contrived paradox. I don't see the need to believe a paradox that isn't clearly taught. We can all be in search of various unifying theories to these data points but it's not exactly a paradox because Scripture doesn't tell us that God is three. One unifying theory does but that means the theory itself is the paradox, not a revelatory one (and thus in my mind not the most likely truth).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

User avatar
steve
Posts: 3392
Joined: Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:45 pm

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by steve » Thu Apr 06, 2017 7:24 pm

That is precisely the paradox I am exploring. Joseph's brothers' wills were entirely free in their actions, and God enacting his own will accomplished precisely what he intended. It says nothing about Joseph's brothers being steered or coerced to do what they did, they were free. Yet the result of their actions was what entirely what God intended for good. It seems that could be applied to all of redemptive history.
The Bible continually speaks of human responsibility for choices made, which can only exist if the choices were made freely without some irresistible divine manipulation. The Bible never suggests that all of people's choices are controlled or ordained by God. Nor does it indicate that all of men's choices are totally free. After all, God did harden hearts, from time to time. But God never hardened the heart of a man who had not previously, by his own series of unfettered choices, already set the trajectory of his own life toward a collision course with God's judgment.

Joseph's brothers, to be sure, inadvertently played into God's plans—but there is no indication that God was feeding choices into their will at the time. They hated Joseph. All God had to do was to place Joseph at their mercy, and their own hatred would take its course. God did not sovereignly ordain that they would hate Joseph. If for any reason, Joseph's brothers had experienced a momentary crisis of conscience before selling Joseph into slavery, and failed to do so, there were certainly plenty of other ways God could have arranged for some other circumstance (being kidnapped by Midianite traders comes to mind as one alternative) to get Joseph into Potiphar's house.

The same is true of Judas, Caiaphas, and others involved in Christ's arrest and crucifixion. They fulfilled God's purpose without realizing it. However, there is nothing in scripture suggesting that God turned them against Christ. They had been planning to kill Him since the beginning of His public ministry. Until that final Passover, they were divinely prevented from doing so, because "His hour was not yet." When the proper time came, God removed His protection and "delivered" Jesus to them (Acts 2:23). God did not need to interfere with their freedom of choice, the trajectory of the choices they had already made and were making over a three year period rendered it predictable that, given the freedom to act upon their own plans, Jesus would be crucified—thus fulfilling God's purpose.

Even if God, in these two cases, and possibly a few more, had sovereignly made these people sin in the ways they did (an entirely unnecessary theory), we have to admit that these were special, world-changing cases, in which God might make an exception to his general hands-off policies. It would not suggest that He also determines everyone's choices (for example, their choice to believe or not to believe the gospel). The Bible nowhere suggests that God interferes with, or has preordained, all human choices.
I don't see how we can say that there is one God who exists in three persons, without changing the definition of one so much that it is no longer one. But I believe in the Trinity. I don't think we have to be able to wrap our mind around every mystery and paradox that we find in scripture.
To say that Adam and Eve were "one flesh" (though they were two persons) does not present a paradox, nor a mathematical problem. We understand that calling them "one" is referring to a different aspect of their being from when they are referred to as "two." There is nothing that defies logic in it. It is just a question of deciding what aspect of their existence is being described when saying they are "one flesh" (we have no problem understanding what is meant when we speak of them as two).

To say that God is "one" is similarly open to interpretation. There are those who interpret according to "Oneness Pentecostalism" or modalism, there are also Arians, as well as those with various trinitarian interpretations. All of them see God as "one", but have different understandings of what that means. Similarly, modalists and trinitarians would have differing understandings of what it means to say that God is "three."

"One in substance, three in person," is the trinitarian standard explanation. While it leaves the terminology questionably defined, yet it does not present a logical contradiction, so long as the "oneness" and the "threeness" of God are describing different aspects. It would truly be a contradiction (and necessarily false) to say that God is both one and three, in exactly the same sense! To say that man is freely choosing his actions, and that God is determining what he will choose, on the other hand, is contradictory—and necessarily false.

Si
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 1:03 am
Location: Wisconsin

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by Si » Fri Apr 07, 2017 7:03 am

Steve,

I appreciate your well thought out post, but I feel like you are replying to points I haven't made. I suggested a compatibility between man's free will and God's will to bring to pass exactly what he intends. I stated Joseph's brothers' wills were free, I never said anything about irresistible divine manipulation, or that God was feeding choices into their will. I suggested that contrary to our limited human understanding, perhaps God is able to determine the outcome of events while not interfering with our free wills (aside from occasional hardenings of the heart you acknowledge). Genesis 50:20 NKJV "But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive." It doesn't say God placed Joseph at their mercy and stood back and hoped it would go a certain way. It says he meant it for good, to bring it about as it is this day. To me that suggests a total involvement by God on a higher level than human understanding allows.

And again with the points you made about Judas and Caiaphas, it seems you are arguing against hard determinism, which I do not hold. Compatibilism seeks to reconcile these men's free choices with God's sovereign plans, not that he made them sin or turned them against Christ against their will. I am putting forward the possibility that the seeming paradox that would arise is due to our limited, creaturely understanding, bound by time, and that in God's infinite knowledge he is able to allow free will and free choices by man and still bring to pass exactly what he intends.

My point about the trinity was only to illustrate that acknowledging mystery and paradox have always been a part of the Christian faith. You can indeed provide logical arguments to suggest they are not, but many Christian traditions embrace mystery and paradox as part of their understanding of the incomprehensible infinitude of God.

User avatar
mattrose
Posts: 1920
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:28 am
Contact:

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by mattrose » Fri Apr 07, 2017 7:42 am

Si...

Do you believe that Joseph's brothers had a genuine freedom to do other than that which they did? Could they have chosen differently?

User avatar
steve
Posts: 3392
Joined: Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:45 pm

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by steve » Fri Apr 07, 2017 10:06 am

Si,

If your understanding of compatibilism is nothing more than "compatibility between man's free will and God's will to bring to pass exactly what he intends," then there is no mystery in that. A chess master also brings about his intended checkmate against his opponent without interfering with the latter's free will to move his own pieces. This only speaks of unmatched competence in a game between unequal opponents. Arminians and Open Theists also believe in this, without invoking mysterious theories of compatibilism. Even an earthly parent can effectively guide his household in the direction of his personal vision without determining any of the decisions his children will make. In certain cases, he may overrule the choices of his children, but he does not dictate what his children will think or prefer.

But Calvinist compatibilism, as it has been explained to me, involves God's sovereignly and inevitably ordaining human choices to believe or not to believe—and, depending on the robustness of their Calvinism, even every other human choice that is made. To try to harmonize this kind of meticulous providence with human freedom is no mystery—it is contradiction, by definition. Affirming two propositions that contradict each other results in nothing but nonsense, and bears no relationship to truth.

Nothing about Joseph's words, in Genesis 50:10, diminishes the validity of anything in my earlier explanation. The reason Joseph's brothers were permitted to sell Joseph into slavery, instead of his being protected from their schemes, was that God meant for him to go to Egypt as a slave "for good." By contrast, God did not mean for Paul to be killed in accordance with the schemes of 40 men who swore to eat nothing until they had killed him—so God thwarted their designs (as He could easily have thwarted the designs of Joseph's brothers).

Calvin himself invoked the word "mystery" promiscuously. Whenever he affirmed two mutually-contradictory things, he would say, "How can these things both be true? It is a mystery!" Calvinists, in order to soften the objections of critics, and render them more willing to accept Calvinistic "mysteries," frequently invoke the near-universal acceptance, among Arminians, of the trinity. They say, "We all accept the mystery of the trinity, why can you not accept these other mysteries as well?"

My answer is that the mystery of the trinity is not the same kind of mystery as is the attempt to affirm compatibilistic free will. The first is mysterious only because we are not given enough information about the facts to piece together a complete picture, not because anything self-contradictory is being affirmed. The trinity is seen by many (including myself) as the most legitimate harmonization of all that the Bible actually affirms about the identities of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—though aspects of the doctrine remain unexplained.

Compatibilism, on the other hand, asks us to harmonize contradictory propositions—one of which is affirmed in scripture, and the other is not. Why create contradictions and mysteries where scripture does not? Isn't theology sufficiently challenging to work out without importing extraneous, contradictory and non-biblical assumptions?

Si
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 1:03 am
Location: Wisconsin

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by Si » Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:35 am

Steve,

I think our disagreement can be summed up in simply pointing out that I hold to compatibilism for a similar reason that we both hold to trinitarianism; I think that it, as a philosophy, best harmonizes all Biblical data. Calvinists didn't invent compatiblism, they merely utilize their own understanding of it, for their own purposes. I honestly don't know how to respond to much of your post because you keep framing your arguments as if I were a Calvinist, which I have stated I am not. Likewise the appreciation of mystery as a part of faith is not unique to Calvinism, but has been utilized by Christians across the ages. How can Jesus be both God and Man? How can a non-corporeal spirit impregnate a woman? How is something created out of nothing? These cannot be understood with human reason or science. Likewise I think that faith is not something that can be argued for merely with human reason, for "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."


Matt,

It seems clear to me that Joseph's brothers acted freely and without coercion to accomplish their purpose, and God acted on a higher level to accomplish his own will above and beyond theirs. How God accomplishes that, and how it relates to what we can or cannot do, I do not know. That's the best answer I can give.
Last edited by Si on Wed May 24, 2017 8:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
TK
Posts: 1477
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:42 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by TK » Fri Apr 07, 2017 12:21 pm

Si-

Saying that "meticulous providence" (Steve's term) is compatible with man's free will is like saying that God can make circles that contain right angles.

Some people get squeamish when it is suggested that God does not know or foreordain everything because they feel it goes against the idea of his omnipotence or omniscience.

But God can't do everything- for example he can't make square circles or make 1+2= 5.

Nor can a man still be free if God has fore-ordained his every action or thought. Saying that a man can be free in this scenario and calling it a "mystery" is sort of a cop-out.

User avatar
mattrose
Posts: 1920
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:28 am
Contact:

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by mattrose » Fri Apr 07, 2017 1:36 pm

Si wrote:
Matt,

It seems clear to me that Joseph's brothers acted freely and without coercion to accomplish their purpose, and God acted on a higher level to accomplish his own will above and beyond theirs. How God accomplishes that, and how it relates to what we can or cannot do, I do not know. That's the best answer I can give.
You said in your first post in this thread that you believe everything WILL turn out the way God wants it

I assume, from that, that you agree that not everything is currently the way God wants it

Which means you are not a believer in divine determinism

The 'mystery' that you seem to believe in is how God will ultimately accomplish His will amidst genuine human freedom. You're not sure how God will do this, but you believe that God will (therefore, you consider it mysterious).

I have no real objection to your view. I think the reason you are getting push-back is because the term 'compatibilism' is frequently used to describe the theorized merger between divine determinism in all things (meticulous sovereignty) and free will. It seems to me you are not really a believer in compatibilism (as I use the term).

User avatar
jasonmodar
Posts: 58
Joined: Thu May 26, 2016 2:54 pm

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by jasonmodar » Fri Apr 07, 2017 2:25 pm

I ran across this video the other day and think it may be relevant to this discussion. The first 3 minutes directly address free will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDhHwfVwMwc

Bruxy Cavey and Greg Boyd are Open Theists but I think this is a decent and simple explanation of our free wills working out with God's will. I found Cavey's reminder that God also has free will and his free will can supersede ours to be of particular help.

Si
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 1:03 am
Location: Wisconsin

Re: A Compatibilistic Understanding of Free Will

Post by Si » Fri Apr 07, 2017 2:37 pm

TK,

God foreordaining every action and thought is hard determinism, which is not the position I hold.

The issue has nothing to do with my being squeamish about contrary viewpoints. I think the issue has really nothing to do with having a strong doctrine of omnipotence, omniscience, or sovereignty, and I find it immensely frustrating and unfair when Calvinists make such arguments against Arminians or Open Theists, and accuse them of being man-centered.

Matt,

I think the push back to my position is against a misconception of compatibilism in general. I know of no mainstream Calvinist who thinks God determines every single human thought or action. That would be hard determinism. I have typically heard compatibilism described as man can do what he wills, but not will what he wills. Man is free to act according to his nature, but only God can change his nature, and from that belief proceeds the Calvinist's views on election and grace. There is an important distinction between creaturely will, and God's will. Concerning my comments earlier on how I think Calvinists unfairly characterize Arminians and Open Theists as being man-centered and so forth; The other side of the coin is that I think Calvinists are unfairly characterized as being incoherent. Maybe they don't have the best arguments, but their theology is quite well thought out and coherent. The body of Christ is never going to be reconciled if we don't even take the time to learn each other's viewpoints honestly.

---------------------

I came into this thread to discuss some thoughts I had on compatibilism and paradox, and I have received counter arguments against hard determinism and Calvinism (which I do not hold), and seemingly no acknowledgement that mystery or paradox has ever played a role in faith or theology, when it demonstrably has. Maybe because up here in Wisconsin there are so many Catholics and Lutherans, for whom mystery and paradox plays a big role in their faith.

Post Reply

Return to “Calvinism, Arminianism & Open Theism”