Letter to a Calvinist

[Candlepower]

I have been in contact with a Christian who subscribes to the Calvinist version. Here is my most recent letter, recipient's name withheld.


Dear ,

Yes, brother, I got your message. Please forgive me for the delay in responding.

It took several years for me to become convinced that Calvin's TULIP is wrong. If I could nail down the one essential reason I left that camp, it is the realization that man actually is responsible for his sins. Calvin and Augustine's theology, however, seem to blame God. Calvin and his followers deny this and allege that man truly IS responsible. But then they assert that the same God who holds man responsible for sin has eons ago meticulously ordained everything every man ever did, is doing, and ever will do.

I struggled with this "catch-22" until I finally realized the meaning of "You can't have your cake and eat it, too." You see, two contradictory assertions cannot be true at the same time. A circle cannot be a square. Two cannot equal three. Man cannot be responsible for sins that God has ordained he must commit.

Calvin attempted to explain this contradiction by asserting it is an unexplainable mystery of God. I disagree. I don't think Calvin and Augustine identified a mystery; I think they made a mistake. I think their enigma is a man-made one. I think Augustine was so enamored of his own genius that he refused to let go completely of his youthful pagan philosophy, Manichaeism. I'm not saying he wasn't a Christian. That's God's business. But I am saying that at best he was an unreformed Christian. He had a vested interest in his own error and refused to discard it, which is a common weakness among theologians. He let it infect his attempts at Christian theology. Instead of jettisoning his pagan philosophy, he attempted to syncretize it with Scripture. The result was a mongrelization of Paganism and Christianity. Augustine was a fatalist. His fatalism was a product of his Manichean underpinnings. It appears to me that Calvin inherited Augustine's syncretic religion, and picked up his fatalistic determinism in the bargain.

Isaiah 1:18 begins, "Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord....'" This tells me that God (of course) can reason, and that man can reason, too. If it were not so, it would be absurd for God to urge man to exercise reason. It would be as absurd as asking a turtle to balance your checkbook. Notice in this passage that God is calling sinful, abhorrent, rebellious people to be reasonable. And the implied assumption is that they can be, and ought to be. Man is capable of reasoning. What Augustine and Calvin ask us to do (in the matter of predestination) is to accept as reasonable the proposition that God condemns men for doing what God makes them do. On the face of it, that is absurd. I don't have to read far into Scripture to see that it is contrary to Scripture as well. And that makes sense, because Scripture makes sense. But in the hands of some theologians, it is turned into nonsense.

God's sovereignty and man's responsibility; the Bible clearly identifies both. Augustine had a problem accepting the coexistence of these two realities. The concept of individual responsibility ran contrary to his basic fatalistic determinism. He "solved" the problem by agreeing that man chooses to sin (and is thereby responsible) but that God ordains everything man does. That does not, of course, solve the problem. It only transfers responsibility for sin from man to God.

Augustine wrongly concluded, I believe, that to grant man's free will is to diminish God's sovereignty. The diminishing of God's sovereignty being anathema to his roots in fatalistic determinism, Augustine attempted to erase man's free will. But in the process, he made God the sole sinner in the universe, a sinner so perverse that He makes men incapable of not sinning, and then punishes them for sinning. He and Calvin explained away their blatant deviation from Scripture by covering it with their often-used "mystery" blanket.

I contend that there is no "Sovereignty vs. Free will" conflict. To me, there is no mystery about it. I contend that God has chosen to exercise His sovereignty in such a way as to allow man a degree of genuine free will, thereby establishing genuine choice, and man's genuine responsibility. I say man's destiny is not fatalistically predetermined. I say God has the right to exercise His sovereignty in whatever way He chooses, even by allowing man to have free will. That contention comports with the fact that every chapter of Scripture asserts man's responsibility. You cannot have responsibility without free choice. And a God who holds men responsible for sins they had to commit is not the reasonable God I find revealed in the Bible.

To suppose that God holds man responsible for actions for which he is not responsible is ludicrous, it seems to me. But Calvinist says God exercises His absolute foreordination over man's actions in such a way that man, not God, is responsible for his actions. To contend that man is responsible for his actions, and at the same time say that his every action was inescapably foreordained, could qualify as the definition of illogic. It would be hard to find a page in the Bible where that assertion is not proven false. Such an idea is as illogical as supposing that if someone serves you a piece of cake, you can swallow it all and still have cake on your plate.

Augustine's theology confines God's sovereignty within the bounds of his Manichean determinism. That is essentially the error, I believe, of Augustine and Calvin.

Brother, I tip-toed on the border and straddled the fence between the two systems for a while. What pushed me off the fence was a series of lectures by Steve Gregg. I may have already told you about them. They are nine lectures under the title, "God's Sovereignty and Man's Salvation." I don't think you'll hear a fairer, fuller, and more politely presented coverage of this topic. I highly recommend them. Find them by going to his website, thenarrowpath and click on the "Topical Lectures" tab. All of those lectures are in MP3 format, and you can download them onto your computer. Everything on his site is free. Always has been.

I know that a person is a Christian if he is a disciple of Jesus {"And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." (Acts 11:26)}. By definition, therefore, a Christian is one who is a disciple of Jesus. A disciple is one who is submitted to the Lordship of Christ and is committed to obeying Him. In that definition, I don't see anything about eschatology, or about ones understanding of just exactly how God exercises His rule. I don't see anything about which comes first, regeneration or faith. Nothing about the sovereignty vs. free-will controversy. Therefore, I conclude that within the circle of disciples, there is a tight nucleus of essential doctrine, and plenty of room for secondary theological disagreement. Notice that when Jesus was dying on the cross, and the thief asked Him to save him, Jesus did not ask the poor man any of the questions we might be prone to ask in order to assess another man's theological expertise. I doubt the thief understood the Trinity. He probably didn't even know Jesus was actually God. That man would have been too theologically deficient to enter the membership roll of about any church in America today. But Jesus assured him he would enter heaven that day. Had he lived through the crucifixion, I like to imagine the man would have been an excellent disciple. And that's what really counts.

As a fellow-disciple, I care little about whether or not you agree with me on the fine points of theology. I care far more about encouraging your faith in our Master. Christianity is not theology; it is a relationship with Christ and His servants. I am pleased to discuss doctrine with you, my brother. Wherever our discussions lead, may they be edifying.

God bless you,

[Singalphile]

I think it's really good. Thanks for sharing.

[CThomas]

I enjoyed reading your letter, and I appreciate the spirit in which it is written, especially the conclusion, but I must respectfully take issue with its argument. You never quite get around to identifying any two statements that Calvinists believe that you find contradictory to each other. And that's because I don't think that the Calivinist view is contradictory in this respect. I think that you can only get some sort of contradiction if you assume incompatibilism -- that an action cannot be freely chosen (and hence give rise to moral culpability) if that action is ultimately caused by things extrinsic to the deciding agent. Some people just assume this without realizing that it is a very highly contested claim. I believe in compatibilism -- that an action can be freely chosen and give rise to moral responsibility so long as it is the product of the unencumbered decisionmaking processes of the deciding agent, even if those decisionmaking processes are themselves ultimately causally traceable to other ultimate causes (whether, as brain activity, to the laws of physics or to the sovereign decree of God, or both of the above). And on that view, against which your letter offers no argument, there is no contradiction in the Calvinist view.

I write this not as an expression of any sort of Calvinist orthodoxy, but rather simply as a matter of my own common sense opinion on the matter.

Best reagards,

CThomas

[Candlepower]

Dear CThomas

Thank you for your response.

You said (referring to me),

You never quite get around to identifying any two statements that Calvinists believe that you find contradictory to each other.

Let me be clear; here are the two contradictory statements:

1) Every person is responsible for his or her sin.
2) God ordained everything that everyone has ever done or will do.

Here is where in my letter I identified or alluded to those two contradictory statements:

1)

Calvin and his followers deny this and allege that man truly IS responsible. But then they assert that the same God who holds man responsible
for sin has eons ago meticulously ordained everything every man ever did, is doing, and ever will do.

2)

Man cannot be responsible for sins that God has ordained he must commit.

3)

…the proposition that God condemns men for doing what God makes them do…

4)

He makes men incapable of not sinning, and then punishes them for sinning.

5)

To contend that man is responsible for his actions, and at the same time say that his every action was inescapably foreordained, could qualify
as the definition of illogic.

Actually, in re-reading my letter I noticed how repetitive I can be. I probably didn’t need to refer to those contradictions so many times.

You said that you

believe in compatibilism -- that an action can be freely chosen and give rise to moral responsibility so long as it is the product of the unencumbered decisionmaking processes of the deciding agent, even if those decisionmaking processes are themselves ultimately causally traceable to other ultimate causes…

That seems to me to be a clearly-stated contradiction in itself, but one that apparently provides for some a mechanism for finding contradictions compatible. It seems to me that an “unencumbered decision-making process” is not unencumbered if it is encumbered by another cause. How can something be both unencumbered and encumbered at the same time? I don’t find those two ideas compatible at all. Compatibilism seems to be a philosophical strategy for comfortably accepting a contradiction by claiming no contradiction exists. I mean no disrespect, but to me that is like saying five equals turnip…and being comfortable with it.

Again, I think Augustine/Calvin imagined a contradiction that does not exist in God’s order. I think they misunderstood how God exercises His sovereignty. They refused to let God be God, and they ordained that He must exercise His sovereignty according to their contrived theology. They put God in their box.

Well, God is not in a box. He has the right to ordain whatsoever comes to pass without ordaining meticulously, if He chooses to do it that way. Who are we to dictate otherwise? God will get the “ship” of history from one port to the other, but He doesn’t have to tie all the passengers’ shoes every morning in order to do it, if He doesn't want to. Who are we to demand otherwise? I believe Scripture’s abundant declarations that we are individually responsible shouts (page after page) that there is an area of genuine freedom in which God allows man actually to choose how to live.

Are people's choices not influenced (encumbered) by God or by other forces outside of themselves? Yes, they certainly are influenced. Often, they are very heavily influenced (because God is not willing that any should perish). But not to the extent that God ordains what choices they will make, thereby making God responsible for the actions of every hero and villain in history. The Augustinian system places total encumbrance on humans by erasing free choice and blaming everything on God. In effect (when you draw it to its clear conclusion), Augustine/Calvin liberate us from all responsibility. Now that's Liberation Theology with a vengence!

I believe that God extends prevenient grace (encumbrance/pressure) to influence us, but that we can choose to resist and refuse that grace. In the end, we each choose; and in the end, we are each responsible. And holding to this God-ordained principle of genuine free choice does not diminish God’s sovereignty one iota (as I once mistakenly thought). Instead, it is a rational affirming that Scripture’s description of how God exercises His sovereignty is actually true. It is saying "yes" to the way it is so un-mysteriously described in the Bible. In this matter, the flawed view of Augustine/Calvin clearly collides with Scripture, it seems to me.

Those men did not need to concoct a contradiction that then forced them to invent an escape clause (mystery) to explain why their obvious contradiction does not really exist. Perhaps Augustine and Calvin sought, by their theological innovation, to exalt God’s sovereignty. Actually, they diminished it, in their own minds, and in the minds of millions after them……in my considered opinion, brother.

The Augustinian alternative (to what I believe is God’s design of resistible prevenient grace) is a design that inescapably makes God solely responsible for all sin. People are merely robots through which God sins, and then blames sin on the robots. Heaven forbid! Saying that we are left free (unencumbered) to sin, but that God causes (encumbers) everything we do, is a construct that simply is not validated in Scripture. In my opinion, such a construct contradicts not only itself, but, most importantly, it contradicts God's Word. Augustine imported into Scripture his view of how God exercises His sovereignty. Unfortunately, his syncretism has proven to be tenacious. But that's not because it's correct.

That said, I love my fellow Christians who have decided to follow Augustine/Calvin, though I pray they wouldn’t. Thank God our understanding of how God administers His authority is not what saves us. (Joshua 24:15)

God bless you,
Candlepower

[CThomas]

Thanks for the response. I don't want to turn this into a pointless debate about what you did and did not identify in your opening message, because it's really neither here nor there, but I'll just briefly observe that none of the several quotations you excerpt identify two statements that you think conflict. Rather, they simply generally charge Calvinists with incoherence in their views regarding moral responsibility. The reason it's important is precisely because of the two statements you now flag as purportedly conflicting:

1) Every person is responsible for his or her sin.
2) God ordained everything that everyone has ever done or will do.

The thing is that these two sentences do not by themselves contradict one another. To derive a contradiction, you need subsidiary contentions that you leave unstated. This would be something like: "(3) Moral responsibility requires a decision that is wholly uncaused by anything outside of the deciding agent." This unstated premise is, of course, the one that is doing all the work, so it's critical that it be set out expressly and addressed. It seems to me, with respect, that you fail to offer any argument in support of it. It seems plainly wrong to me, and I hold that view for reasons having nothing to do with Calvinism. (I've believed in compatibilism since before I knew anything about Calvinism, so I demonstrably did not adopt it as a means to justify any particular theological system.) You can assert, as you do, that you think it's so obviously wrong that there's no need to rebut it, but at the end of the day such an assertion will not persuade anyone who isn't already inclined to agree with you. There are (to me) quite powerful reasons to reject (3). As language is ordinarily used in everyday conversation, the key criterion for determining whether a choice was freely made by a person is simply whether the person's actions are determined by the person's decisionmaking processes. Nothing turns on the further question whether those decisionmaking processes themselves turn out ultimately to be physically determined events of a mechanistic brain physiology or, correspondingly, whether they conform to an external decree of God. Rather, a decision is freely chosen, if the person could have chosen otherwise, which means, just so long as the decision was not compelled or coerced by forces outside the person's own decisionmaking processes. It seems to me that what sometimes gets presupposed without argument is the further point -- essential to disproving compatibilism -- that the foregoing is not the ordinary or appropriate means of specifying what it means to make a free decision. It certainly seems to conform to ordinary usage.

CThomas

[Homer]

CThomas,

I think I am having the same difficulty as Candlepower in understanding your position. You wrote:

I believe in compatibilism -- that an action can be freely chosen and give rise to moral responsibility so long as it is the product of the unencumbered decisionmaking processes of the deciding agent, even if those decisionmaking processes are themselves ultimately causally traceable to other ultimate causes (whether, as brain activity, to the laws of physics or to the sovereign decree of God, or both of the above).

You appear to say that the "decision making process" and "brain activity" are two separate activities; I would think they are the same. Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain your statement in another way.

[Candlepower]

CThomas,

Perhaps contradiction is in the eye of the beholder. Apparently the party asserting one sometimes doesn’t see it.

You said to me in your initial response: "You never quite get around to identifying any two statements that Calvinists believe that you find contradictory to each other." Then you said, “And that's because I don't think that the Calivinist (sic) view is contradictory in this respect.” There you have it. Perhaps you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see Calvin’s contradiction because you had already eliminated the possibility of there being one.

I consider Augustine/Calvin’s mutually-negating doctrine that God causes (decrees, determines, ordains) man to sin and simultaneously holds him responsible for it as a glaring contradiction. I have repeated that view numerous times in a variety of ways. Now I've done it another time. But brother, if you don’t see it as a contradiction, and you are comfortable with it, then I wish you peace, prosperity, good health, and long life anyway. I don’t know how else to help you see what I see, and I’m frankly not very interested in trying any more.

Blessings

[CThomas]

Homer -- I'm glad to try to clarify. I'm drawing a distinction between two different forms of causation. One form of causaation interrupts the decisionmaking process of a free agent. This first form involves things like me grabbing the agent's arm and moving it against his will. Or holding a gun to the agent's head. These sorts of actions cause the agent's body to do things in a way that is inconsistent with the decisionmaking apparatus he uses to reach his free decisions. He WOULD have chosen not to hit me, but someone grabbed his arm and made him do it against his will. That's form one. Form two is a causation that does not interfere with the agent's decisionmaking but rather underlies it. The individual chose to eat the cookie. The external causation doesn't stem from the fact that somebody made him do something contrary to his free will, but rather it involves explaining what his free will is doing when it makes its own unconstrained decision. My view is that these two forms of causation are critically different and that it is vital not to mix them up with each other. The fromer -- type one causation above -- is the sort of external causation that undermines the free choice of the agent. The second kind of external causation plainly does not. Think of the way the question of volition is discussed in any ordinary example. If I ask whether he made the free decision to hit me, I'm asking whether he did it on his own or whether there was some external force that prevented him from deciding using his ordinary decisionmaking. (Was he coerced? Did someone grab his arm and move it against his will?) if so, I will say that he didn't freely decide to hit me. When I ask that question I'm certainly not asking whether his freely chosen course of conduct was such that those decisionmaking mechanisms are grounded in a deeper causality (e.g., whether his decisions were ultimately determined by the laws of physics). Does that make this any clearer?

Candlepower -- I understand that you believe this to be contradictory. But I think the Calvinist is entitled to ask for some sort of argument or demonstration supporting that conclusion, or else he will simply be unpersuaded. I've tried to offer specific arguments in support of my contrary belief.

Regards,

CThomas

[psimmond]

CThomas,
I'm afraid I don't see your second example as causation at all. In fact it seems nothing more than, as you said, "explaining what his free will is doing when it makes its own unconstrained decision."

It seems to me that you're just creating a new and very different definition for "causation."

It seems you are saying God doesn't ordain the sins of unbelievers through external causation but through explanatory causation. This seems to be an interesting but illogical way of dismissing a contradiction.

So I think what you are calling type 2 causation isn't causation at all but is what most people call free will.

[CThomas]

CThomas,
I'm afraid I don't see your second example as causation at all. In fact it seems nothing more than, as you said, "explaining what his free will is doing when it makes its own unconstrained decision."

It seems to me that you're just creating a new and very different definition for "causation."

It seems you are saying God doesn't ordain the sins of unbelievers through external causation but through explanatory causation. This seems to be an interesting but illogical way of dismissing a contradiction.

So I think what you are calling type 2 causation isn't causation at all but is what most people call free will.

Hi, Psimmond. Thanks for the response. I think, respectfully, you're making my point for me. Nothing turns on whether you want to call this "causation" or something else. I completely agree with you that what I called type-2 causation (feel free to use any word you want for it) is wholly consistent with free will, as you acknowledge in your last sentence. So it follows that if "type-2 causation" (or whatever word we use for that concept) is consistent with the exercise of free will, then it follows that God can, without any sort of contradiction, decree the freely chosen actions of a person, so long as it does not involve external compulsion (or "true" causation in your terminology). Which was my only real point here.

God bless,

CThomas