Section 21
Go to Chapter 7 – The Indispensibility of Reason and Logic in Biblical Interpretation
We have seen that the Reformed Calvinist mode of interpretive thought can be perplexing. It is characterized by the acceptance of incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction. In a word, it is incoherent. Calvinists ultimately disregard philosophical and moral critiques of their interpretations and theology. Coherence, consistency, and contradiction are not hermeneutically significant for determining the validity of their interpretations. Within Calvinism, the text is interpreted to mean what the Calvinist theological tradition has come to declare it means, regardless of the evidence of incoherence, inconsistency, or contradiction among their interpretations and within their theological system that is constructed from those interpretations.
As far as I can tell, the fundamental spiritual mindset here is genuine and well-meaning. Calvinists seek to exalt God’s rule over all things and give him all the glory due his name. But Calvinists also seem to have taken it upon themselves to construct a hedge around God’s sovereignty and glory to the degree that they have exceeded the scriptural testimony regarding these divine characteristics. They perceive themselves to be the guardians of God’s sovereignty and glory, and that has taken them into extrapolations of Scripture that go beyond what the Scripture means to tell us about divine sovereignty and glory. That is, to preserve these divine spaces from human intrusion, the Calvinist has extrapolated divine sovereignty and glory to their highest degree, that is, universal divine causal determinism. Theistic determinism guarantees that God’s will, plans, and purposes will not be influenced, threatened, or compromised by anything or anyone. Hence, for the Calvinist, this is what it means for God to be God. He is viewed first and foremost, and when all is said and done, exclusively in terms of his absolute power interpreted as him having predetermined what is to occur down to the minutest details. The logical entailment of this is that God also causes everything that happens in the world, both good and evil. Nothing less than a universal divine causal determinism could guarantee the preservation of God’s sovereignty and glory from mankind’s grasp. This is, of course, a ludicrous, biblically unfounded fear, for man could never present a threat either to God’s sovereignty or his glory, even when not defined deterministically. To affirm God is sovereign in the context of genuine, substantial human freedom and responsibility is not the kind of “threat” that would cause God one iota of anxiety. God remains Creator, and man is the creature. The creature does not have that kind of power over the Creator. But what man can do, which confirms that he does have free will, worries the Calvinist, and this worry causes him to exceed the bounds of the biblical witness in defining God’s sovereignty and glory. The Calvinist secures God’s place as God and man’s place as man via theistic determinism. But by doing this, he perverts both the character and decrees of God and the image of God in man. Theistic determinism is not what the Bible teaches concerning the God/man relationship or the nature of reality. In short, the biblical witness speaks of God’s sovereignty as His ability to successfully rule and reign over all His creation, including His human creations, whom He has endowed with freedom of the will and moral responsibility. God reigns by virtue of who God is with respect to all his divine attributes. God does what he pleases, but what he pleases is an expression of the panoply of all his attributes of love, mercy, compassion, goodness, power, wisdom, knowledge, etc. For God to be sovereign means the unfailing accomplishment of all that he has planned and purposed via all that he is. A comprehensive biblical theology, or a close look at all God is and does in the Bible, does not support a universal divine causal determinism. So that Calvinist feels the need to be “protective” of God, which ironically reveals that the Calvinist has too high a view of man in his freedom and too low a view of God in both His freedom and His many other attributes. The Calvinist feels the need to come to God’s rescue by protecting God’s sovereignty against human persons with a concern even more than God himself has for his sovereign rule. Reminiscent of the Jewish leadership of Jesus day, the Calvinist goes above and beyond the real nature of the situation to keep the “spiritual high ground” and a “hedge” around God’s sovereignty and glory to secure both from somehow being seized by sinners for themselves. But in doing so, they are imposing their own thoughts about God upon the text and constructing theologies from what the Bible does not teach. God, in has sovereignty, has given freedom to man. And if that is the way God wanted it to be, what is fine with him should be fine with us. In short, God can handle it.
The problem with this well-meaning religious sentiment on the part of Calvinists is that it has blinded them to the negative and unbiblical logical and moral entailments of their determinism. Divine sovereignty cannot be equated with divine determinism. We know this because we see that determinism wreaks logical and moral havoc with other clear biblical teachings, and as good exegetes and interpreters, this cannot be allowed and need not be the case. Rather than take these logical and moral problems as indications of misinterpretation, the Calvinist has incorporated a rejection of logical and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction into their hermeneutic. They have adopted a hermeneutic of incoherence in contrast to a hermeneutic of coherence, which maintains that claims about what the Bible teaches necessarily involve a logically and morally reasoned assessment of the interpreter’s conclusions.
I, too, believe God is sovereign, but I have also demonstrated why sovereignty cannot be defined as a universal divine causal determinism. I, too, believe in the doctrine of election while also believing that it is not to be understood in terms of the Calvinists’ unconditional election. And most importantly here, given the Calvinists’ deterministic theology and soteriology, the character of God and the gospel as “good news” are at stake. An absolutely holy God cannot be the determiner and cause of evil, evil thoughts, and evil actions. Furthermore, God has demonstrated his love for every person through Christ’s death on the cross (Rom. 5:8). Human persons are substantially free beings, and it is they themselves that either accept or reject the salvation offered in Christ. God has not predestined our eternal destinies from before the creation of the world. The doctrine of election is not about an unconditional choice or decision God has made about each person’s eternal salvation or damnation. People are responsible, free agents. They are culpable for what they do or fail to do. This is the biblical witness to the nature of faith. Of his own will and decision, it is the sinner himself who either believes to eternal life or remains in unbelief to eternal condemnation (Jn. 3:16-18). I, too, believe the Bible is our absolute authority. But on hermeneutical grounds, I cannot hold to a definition of sovereignty and election that is logically and morally inconsistent or contradictory with what that same Scripture clearly reveals and teaches as to the contingent nature of reality, human freedom, and moral responsibility. If we believe that the divinely inspired Scripture cannot be inconsistent, nor can it contradict itself, that is, we believe that the authors intended to write cogently to be understood, and that it can be demonstrated that incoherence and real contradiction mark the Calvinists’ interpretations and theological paradigm, then intellectual integrity requires that we reject Calvinism at its points of incoherence and contradiction while seek to progress towards the coherent and consistent truth of the text. This may require an adjustment of one’s theology. Through challenging dialogue, new spiritual, intellectual, literary, and historical insights, and continually engaging the whole biblical canon in a constant process of refining our interpretations of individual texts, we should seek to know what the authors intended to say in the controverted passages, but always doing so with a concern for coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction. I have demonstrated that this is not the hermeneutical approach of Calvinism. Rather, Calvinists have dogmatically solidified their interpretations, doctrines, and hermeneutic apart from concerns about rational and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction. Hence, their own interpretations and doctrinal conclusions can be incoherent, inconsistent, and contradictory, while they also maintain that they are scriptural truths.[131]
Therefore, my point is that a sound, biblical exegesis must operate on a hermeneutic that rejects incoherence as indicative of misinterpretation. How we know which interpretive conclusions and biblical and systematic theologies are closer to the biblical truth requires a hermeneutic of coherence. The hermeneutical question is this. Can isolated biblical texts be exegeted in such a way that even though those interpretations generate incoherence, inconsistency, and even real contradiction within their own contexts and with the extended context of the scriptures, we are nevertheless compelled to conclude that the Bible teaches them as such? Furthermore, are we compelled to believe them as such based on that exegesis alone, apart from the philosophical and moral reasoning that exposes their incoherence, inconsistency, or contradiction? The Reformed Calvinist would answer “Yes.” The non-Calvinist would answer “No.” But I submit that the Reformed Calvinists’ response has the practical effect of violating the laws of logic and our moral intuitions, denying that Scripture interprets Scripture as well as violating the principle of context.
Certainly, if an interpretation were rationally or morally coherent, disagreement could occur on other grounds, and a proposed interpretation may still be a misinterpretation. But it seems to me that we must agree that interpretations that can be deemed valid should necessarily also adhere to the fundamental laws of reasoning. If the problem of rational incoherence indicts Calvinist theology in misinterpretation, then this aspect of the problem must be addressed by the Calvinist. It seems to me that the Calvinist would have to explain on what other basis exegesis could proceed and the truth or falsity of a proposed meaning be determined apart from the use and deliverances of the laws of logic and our moral intuitions. If these are forfeited, then we have gone beyond logical and moral reasoning with nothing left to aid us in gaining the true meaning of a text as well as the veracity of a proposed theological system. The point is that it must be agreed upon by all evangelical scholars, pastors, teachers, and laypersons that adhering to the fundamental laws of logic and moral intuition must be included in the exegetical process and that these are necessary for determining the validity of interpretive conclusions; otherwise, one could never determine or know a valid conclusion from an invalid one.
In his essay, De Futilitate, C. S. Lewis stated the following about the essential role of logical thought and valid inference in coming to know what is real and true. The point raised by Lewis about the relevance or irrelevance of logical thought has direct application not only to verifying the Calvinists’ interpretations of Scripture but also to the Calvinists’ claim that “total inability” has so affected our thinking that we cannot comprehend how the Calvinist doctrines are coherent. Lewis writes,
“I asked whether in general human thought could be set aside as irrelevant to the real universe and merely subjective. I now claim to have found the answer to this larger question. The answer is that at least one kind of thought—logical thought—cannot be subjective and irrelevant to the real universe: for unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe. We reach our knowledge of the universe only by inference. The very object to which our thought is supposed to be irrelevant depends on the relevance of our thought. A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us that inference is invalid. That would really be a bit too nonsensical. I conclude then that logic is a real insight into the way in which real things have to exist. In other words, the laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.
This admission seems to me completely unavoidable and it has very momentous consequences.” [132]/[133]
The Calvinist seems to be telling us that human thought can be set aside, indeed must be set aside, to grasp the Calvinist doctrines. That is, the Calvinists claim that our thought is irrelevant to understanding God and Scripture as they interpret Scripture and understand God to be. And yet acceptance of this claim depends upon the relevance of our thought processes. The Calvinist, after all, will argue for the legitimacy of his interpretations and theological conclusions. The Calvinist seems to want us to ignore the idea that “the very object to which our thought is supposed to be irrelevant depends on the relevance of our thought.” Logical thought cannot be irrelevant to finding the intended or real meaning of a text. We reach knowledge of the meaning of a text only by making inferences to the best explanation. Therefore, unless our thought is valid, we have no reason to believe in anyone’s interpretative conclusions. And because thought is valid, we have no reason to believe the Calvinists’ interpretive conclusions because they dismiss the deliverances of logical thought. The Calvinist maintains that their interpretations, which violate reason, are nevertheless biblically faithful. But the very object to which our thought is supposed to be irrelevant – an interpretation of the text – depends on the relevance of our thought. It is therefore necessary that we come to grips with the indispensable and essential role logical reasoning and moral intuition play in biblical interpretation and theological constructions. Those interpretations and constructions that summarily dismiss the relevance of logical thought and moral intuition for discerning the truth or validity of those interpretations and constructions do not warrant our belief.
In the following chapters, I will provide specific examples of poor Calvinist reasoning, not only in their attempts to justify their determinism, but also in their handling of the biblical text and theological matters. I will highlight their incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions, not only to show the implausibility of Calvinism, but also to point out that the matter of rational and moral coherence in interpretation is what divides the non-Calvinist from the Calvinist.
Let’s begin in Chapter 8 with the various problems that determinism creates for the Calvinist and go on to examine the “explanations” they offer to relieve these problems.
Footnotes
[131] I maintain this to be the case, Reformed compatibilism notwithstanding. My critique of Reformed compatibilism can be found in Chapter 8 and in “The Vanhoozer Essays” Pt. 4.1, Pt. 4.2, Pt. 4.3 and Pt. 4.10, which is an evaluation of compatibilism as expressed in the theology of Kevin Vanhoozer.
[132] C. S. Lewis, “De Futilitate” in Christian Reflections, ed., Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 63.
[133] Lewis’s best and fullest treatment on the validity of human reasoning appears in the first six chapters of his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Bles, 1947), especially Chapter III, ‘The Self—Contradiction of the Naturalist’. Later, Lewis felt that in Chapter III, he confused two senses of irrational; this chapter was rewritten and appears in its corrected form in the paper-backed edition of Miracles (Fontana Books, 1960).
The Truth of the Gospel 