Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
1. Rational and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction are necessary for determining valid interpretations of Scripture.
2. Rational and moral incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction are sufficient characteristics for determining invalid interpretations of Scripture.
The logical, moral, epistemological, practical, and theological incoherence and contradictions generated by Calvinist interpretations of divine sovereignty and soteriology are reliable indicators that those interpretations are wrong. The presence of incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction is sufficient to declare a proposed interpretation to be incorrect. A biblically sound hermeneutic does not generate incoherence and contradiction among the meanings of various texts and theological concepts. It is a faulty hermeneutic that accepts conflicting interpretative results, especially when in conflict with the meanings of the clearer, universally affirmed texts and theological truths of Scripture.
3. There is a hermeneutical divide between non-Calvinists and Calvinists.
The Calvinist does not acknowledge that rational and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction are essential to a proper hermeneutic. The non-Calvinist acknowledges these as necessary to a proper hermeneutic. This is the hermeneutical divide that causes the differences in interpretation between the Calvinist and non-Calvinist positions. It is the fundamental cause of the controversy between Calvinists and non-Calvinists.
4. The Calvinist’s soteriological interpretive conclusions are non-negotiable.
Calvinists presuppose that their soteriological interpretations are the true and accurate interpretations of the relevant texts. They do not consider that the incoherencies and contradictions that their interpretations generate may indicate that they have misinterpreted these texts. Rather, they explain away these incoherencies by simply resorting to divine mystery, apparent contradiction, the Bible teaches both (determinism and human freedom), the incapacity of sinful human reason, incomprehensibility, lack of faith, the desire for human autonomy, human pride, compatibilism, etc. But these are bold assertions or philosophical “end runs” that do nothing to address the Calvinists’ incoherence, nor do they lend insight into the truth of these matters or address the hermeneutical issues involved.
5. The principle of coherence is integral to the essential interpretive principle of context.
To interpret in context is, in principle and practice, equivalent to interpreting coherently. The principle of context presumes that the author intended to be coherent in his writing. Therefore, interpreting in context requires that our interpretations demonstrate how they are coherent with the thoughts in the immediate context and in light of the truths gleaned from the broader context or full scope of the canon of Scripture.
6. To accept incoherence in interpretation is to violate the universally accepted fundamental hermeneutical principle of context.
In that Calvinist interpretation is characterized by logical and moral incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction, Calvinists must ultimately ignore the essential hermeneutical principle of context. They are in effect setting different contexts at odds with each other.
7. By resorting to divine mystery, apparent contradiction, the Bible teaches both, the incapacity of sinful human reason, incomprehensibility, lack of faith, the desire for human autonomy, human pride, etc., the Calvinist fosters an anti-intellectualism which shuts down responsible thinking and inquiry into what constitutes a sound, biblical hermeneutic and a reasoned examination of their own exegetical conclusions.
8. Philosophical reasoning and moral intuitions must be included as a part of a responsible exegesis and sound hermeneutic. These must not be suppressed.
We must maintain that interpretations that can be deemed valid should take seriously the deliberations of our logical faculties and moral intuitions. We acknowledge this to be the case in all other disciplines, inquiries, and conclusions we come to. We believe things to be true based on clear, logical, and moral reasoning. The law of non-contradiction is one of these laws of logic that, if dismissed, leaves us without rational means to discern what is true from what is false; what is rational from what is irrational; what constitutes valid thought and its conclusions from invalid thought and its conclusions. It is no wonder that the Calvinist must then flee to “mystery” or “incomprehensibility.” They are required to do so because their theology has generated contradictions, and to insist that such a theology is the truth requires eliminating from one’s hermeneutic the intellectual tools that serve us in discerning true from false interpretations. Given the Calvinist’s interpretations that generate logical and moral incoherencies and contradictions, to preserve those interpretations, reason must be suppressed.
The point is that the Calvinist relies on reason to perform his exegesis, but then jettisons it when his exegesis produces interpretations of divine sovereignty as deterministic and election as unconditional that contradict what we know of human freedom and the nature and character of God as good, which are also gleaned from a responsible exegesis of Scripture. Deterministic sovereignty and unconditional election also contradict our logical and moral intuitions about justice and love, which are informed by both natural and special revelation. Adherence to fundamental laws of rational thought and our best moral intuitions, informed by and continually interacting with Scripture, is the basis upon which we must discern the validity of our interpretive conclusions; otherwise, one could never determine a valid interpretive conclusion from an invalid one.
Granted, human reason does not have the capacity to discover all the truth about God. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is whether what is claimed to be true about God as revealed in written Scripture is incoherent with what is also claimed to be true about many other revealed biblical and theological doctrines in the same written Scripture. It is a matter of discerning the truth among things that have already been revealed. And since this revelation has been given via a written text, identifying and practicing proper textual interpretation becomes essential. And proper textual interpretation requires agreement on what constitutes sound hermeneutical principles.
Conflicting scriptural interpretations need an arbiter. What is in question is whether it can be legitimately asserted that Scripture itself warrants the conclusion that Scripture contradicts itself logically and morally as when the Calvinist claims “the Bible teaches both determinism and free will” or that it teaches “unconditional election, an effectual call, and irresistible grace” while also teaching “the sinner is responsible for either accepting or rejecting the gospel.” What is in question is whether it can be legitimately asserted that God’s nature and actions can be the complete reversal of our logical and moral reasoning, our sense of justice and equity, our understanding and experience of love and goodness, etc., as when it is claimed that God loves every person and yet created certain persons are to be predestined to eternal damnation and punishment in hell for the sole purpose of glorifying himself by displaying his wrath on them. If that is the case, then it is, as C. S. Lewis put it, “God is we know not what.”
Certainly, God must reveal himself and his ways to us because they are beyond our capacity to discover and know due to the limitations of our finite reason. Yet his revelation is not incoherent, inconsistent, or contradictory within itself. Reason is given to us by God to be the sufficient arbiter for accurately understanding what God has already revealed in nature and His Word. David Baggett and Jerry Walls observe,
“There are aspects of God that transcend our reason to be sure, but God doesn’t call us to believe anything opposed to reason. This distinction is one that some popular postmodern Christian writers often fail to grasp, and they thereby tend to make a virtue of incoherence.”[33]
When the Calvinist dismisses as “mystery,” “antinomy,” “human incomprehensibility,” “the Bible teaches both,” etc., what we know to be in conflict with properly basic logical and moral beliefs, then no sufficient arbiter remains to discern whether the proposed interpretations are correct or not. This is how Calvinism survives. The mind is left suspended in conflicting and contradictory thoughts and can find no sufficiently sure grounding; no resting place in a suitable resolution, not even in God himself! That is the very essence of a real contradiction. For all things, including our reasonings, ultimately must find their grounding in the character and works of God.
Interpretations must be reasonably and responsibly established exegetically but also reasonably and responsibly defended philosophically, that is, demonstrate clear, coherent thought. Therefore, when real contradiction and incoherence are the result of the exegetical interpretive procedure, that procedure and its conclusions must be revisited. Performing exegesis in accord with the laws of logic and our moral intuitions is the real non-negotiable here, not the Calvinist understanding of sovereignty as divine determinism and election as unconditional. To equate the Calvinist “doctrines of grace” with the unerring, non-negotiable teaching of Scripture, and to claim the non-Calvinist is relying on fallen human reason, seeking human autonomy, and refusing to bow to the authority of God and Scripture, is question-begging. Rational coherence and moral norms are the means to discern the validity of interpretive claims.
9. Reason, revelation, and exegesis should not be dichotomized.
Does my thesis that our interpretations must exhibit coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction place human reason above revelation and the grammatical-historical method of exegesis? No. Rather, I am making a much-needed clarification of the relationship among reason, revelation, and exegesis in the interpretative task.
Baggett and Walls state that logical reasoning, our moral sense, and theological coherence are God-given aspects of his general revelation to us. Therefore, these faculties have a degree of reliability for discerning the truth about reality. This would include claims about the meaning of biblical texts and the theological paradigms built upon them. Therefore, coherence and non-contradiction must be brought to bear in discerning the validity of textual interpretations along with their theological propositions and constructs.
Each side in the Calvinist/non-Calvinist debate can produce its “proof texts.” Each claims that a proper exegesis of these texts supports their doctrinal conclusions. Yet, they also result in contradictory views. This problem cannot be ignored. What will adjudicate between conflicting, contradictory exegetical conclusions? The solution to the problem must be found in a fuller consideration of what constitutes a proper hermeneutic. Therefore, this is ultimately a hermeneutical issue.
Baggett and Walls state that a proper hermeneutic must incorporate “philosophy,” which simply is the use of our God-given reason for the purpose of thinking clearly about interpretive claims. This rational, clear thinking is a God-give aspect of what theologians call general revelation. They write,
“We think of our argument as unapologetically appealing to general revelation, which means we reject the claim that philosophy can or should be ignored in the process of figuring out the answers to such questions. The Protestant principle of sola scriptura is sometimes today misunderstood to imply that clear thinking and good reason play no part in figuring out God’s revealed truths. The primacy of the Bible in terms of its theological truth is taken to imply that exegesis, biblical interpretation, carefully isolated from any other sources of insight, ought to be able to answer any and all theological disputes that may arise.
Skepticism toward philosophy often reaches fever pitch in the Calvinism / Arminianism debate, where disputants on both sides of the divide often eschew the deliverances of philosophy and insist that the question must be settled on biblical and exegetical grounds alone. Any hint of even bringing philosophical analysis into the conversation is thought to be anathema, abandoning the authority of Scripture to provide reliable revelation.
Here we need to draw an important distinction. Whereas biblical authority trumps in the realm of theological norms, there are more basic philosophical processes at play that hold logical priority in the realm of basic epistemology….take the choice of the Bible as authoritative rather than, say, the Koran; this selection, to be rational, requires that we have good reasons for believing the Bible to be God’s real revelation. Appeal to those considerations involves trust in reason, which involves trust in our ability to think philosophically. The Bible is to be taken as authoritative in the realm of theological truth. But before we can rationally believe such a thing, as human beings privy to general revelation and endowed with the ability to think we must weigh arguments and draw conclusions, that is, do philosophy. Proper trust in the Bible altogether involves the process of thinking rationally. It’s a fundamental mistake to think otherwise.
…When someone suggests that we “don’t need philosophy,” either in this debate or more generally, their words at best reflect a huge misunderstanding. The sentiment wrongly assumes that we are even able to understand the Bible, let alone discern that it is the ultimate revelation from God, without the capacity to think. Philosophy is, to put it most succinctly, clear thought. Perhaps it sounds pious to say that all we need is the Bible, and Protestants do in fact believe there’s a sense in which it’s true that Christians are to be a people of one book, but it’s at worst a sentiment predicated on a laughably shallow, simplistic, naïve epistemology and hermeneutic. It’s just not that simple. We can’t open the Bible and begin to understand it without engaging our reason, and using our critical faculties in this fashion as an interpretive tool is not to exalt the deliverances of reason above the deliverances of Scripture. If, in addition to building a strong biblical and historical case against Calvinism…we can also build a strong philosophical case, that’s significant. Indeed, it’s essential to the very process of biblical interpretation…Philosophy can and ought to help adjudicate this intractable debate among Christians.”[34]
The matters at issue here are very well-expressed by Baggett and Walls. Their main point is that the deliverances of philosophy and the observations of exegesis cannot be separated in the interpretive process. Exegesis alone does not necessarily lead to an accurate understanding of a text. There are issues in interpretation that cannot be settled only on exegetical grounds. To ignore the deliverances of philosophical reflection as essential to one’s hermeneutic, that is, the need for coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction, is to expose oneself to the possibility of seriously misinterpreting the text.
Even the Calvinist apologist and philosopher Greg Koukl would agree. Although writing in an apologetic context on the virtues of argument, his comments on the role of reason in biblical interpretation are applicable here. He writes,
“Imagine living in a world in which you couldn’t distinguish between truth and error… Such a world would be a dangerous place. You wouldn’t survive long.
What protects us from the hazards of such a world? If you’re a Christian, you might be tempted to say, “The Word of God protects us.” Certainly, that’s true, but the person who says that might be missing something else God has given us that is also vitally important. In fact, God’s Word would be useless without it.
A different thing is necessary before we can accurately know what God is saying through his Word. Yes, the Bible is first in terms of authority, but something else is first in terms of the order of knowing: We cannot grasp the authoritative teaching of God’s Word unless we use our minds properly. Therefore, the mind, not the Bible, is the very first line of defense God has given us against error.
For some of you this may be a controversial statement, so let’s think about it for a moment. In order to understand the truth of the Bible accurately, our mental faculties must be intact and we must use them as God intended. We demonstrate this fact every time we disagree on an interpretation of a biblical passage and then give reasons why our view is better than another’s. Simply put, we argue for our point of view, and if we argue well, we separate wheat from chaff, truth from error.
Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Loving God with the mind is not a passive process. It is not enough to have sentimental religious thoughts. Rather, it involves coming to conclusions about God and his world based on revelation, observation, and careful reflection.
What is the tool we use in our observations of the world that helps us separate fact from fiction? That tool is reason, the ability to use our minds to sort through observations and draw accurate conclusions about reality. Rationality is one of the tools God has given us to acquire knowledge.
Generally, sorting things out is not a solitary enterprise. It’s best done in the company of others who dispute our claims and offer competing ideas. In short, we argue. Sometimes we are silent partners, listening, not talking, but the process is going on in our minds just the same.
This is not rationalism, a kind of idolatry of the mind that place’s man’s thinking at the center of the universe. Rather, it’s the proper use of one of the faculties God has given us to understand him and the world he has made.”[35]
My point here is that when reason or “philosophical analysis,” more popularly expressed as using our “common sense,” is applied to the controversy, Calvinism is found wanting. In response, Calvinists prematurely, and somewhat cavalierly, dismiss the overwhelming evidence that their soteriology is marked by incoherence and contradiction. Therefore, they fail to incorporate the “more basic philosophical processes at play.” They fail to incorporate into their hermeneutic what reason is telling them. Note that Koukl’s Calvinism is defeated by his own criteria. He defends the use of our God-given mental faculties in interpretation, but fails to see that his own Calvinism violates the very principle he is defending. Recall that he writes,
“We demonstrate this fact every time we disagree on an interpretation of a biblical passage and then give reasons why our view is better than another’s. Simply put, we argue for our point of view, and if we argue well, we separate wheat from chaff, truth from error.”
What is it to argue well? According to Koukl, it involves the use of reason. He states, “Rationality is one of the tools God has given us to acquire knowledge.” Now, rationality means to think logically. It involves clear thinking according to the canons of reason. And according to Koukl, if you argue well, you separate truth from error. By claiming mystery, tension, antinomy, human incomprehensibility, “the Bible teaches both,” etc., regarding their divine determinism and human freedom, Calvinists have abandoned logical thinking and moral intuition when discussing and defending their doctrines. Therefore, according to Koukl’s criteria, a criterion we agree on, his Calvinism proves itself to be in error. Moreover, even when Calvinists acknowledge their interpretive incoherencies and contradictions, they do not consider this cause to question the accuracy of their interpretations. Yet, Baggett and Walls argue that these incoherencies should be weighty indicators that something is amiss in the Calvinist’s textual interpretations.
The Calvinist obviously implicitly admits to the necessity that the interpretive process adhere to the laws of logic and our moral intuitions; otherwise, they would not strive to reconcile their own deterministic views with human freedom by attempting to argue that theistic determinism and genuine human freedom are compatible (i.e., compatibilism). Other indications that reveal they feel the force of the inconsistency and contradiction of their determinism in light of the biblical witness to contingency and human freedom are evidenced by their need to assert that the problem is an “apparent” contradiction, along with the other rationalizations listed above.
Calvinists also claim that non-Calvinists who reject their theistic determinism are merely exhibiting their desire for creaturely autonomy from the sovereign, Creator God. They say it is evidence of a lack of humility and stubborn pride on the part of the non-Calvinist to refuse to embrace their “doctrines of grace.” Yet, of course, this too is incoherent and self-defeating, for it presupposes genuine human freedom. The consistent Calvinist would simply have to say that God has determined such to be the case with these people. But then, what is there to reconcile or even discuss? All this is to say that if the biblical teaching were as clearly deterministic as Calvinists make it out to be, there would be no problem here to reconcile. Each is determined by God to believe what they believe. Consistent Calvinists will leave it at that, and that is perhaps the reason why they feel they can simply ignore those who challenge their theology. But if Calvinism is indeed self-defeating in this way, given that we do take logic on board in our hermeneutic, then we must conclude Calvinism is false.
The main point here is that rather than question the accuracy of their interpretations due to the contradiction and incoherence generated by them, Calvinists would rather dismiss the possibility that they have misinterpreted the text and find refuge in the above “explanations.” Yet, all that the Calvinist has done is merely assert that we cannot comprehend divine sovereignty, human freedom, election, predestination, etc., as they have interpreted these. But that is not a convincing defense of their exegesis, and more fundamentally, the hermeneutic that brought them to their position. What they are making very clear is that their hermeneutic does not include the light shed upon these issues by philosophical deliberations and moral considerations. What the Calvinist has done is incorporate incoherence and contradiction into his hermeneutic and interpretive method. Once that move is made, there is no rational means by which the issue can be discussed and remedied with the Calvinist. They will never come to biblical truth in these matters. The Calvinist has created and adopted a hermeneutic of incoherence. And that hermeneutic isolates and insulates his Calvinism from rational and moral critique.
Non-Calvinists do not disagree that biblical exegesis is foundational to getting at the meaning of a text. They only insist that good exegesis rests upon the acceptance and adherence to sound hermeneutical principles. It is only based on a sound hermeneutic that the validity of one’s exegesis can be evaluated. It is not just the exegetical exercise and the proposed interpretation that are the issue here. It is also the validity of the interpretive conclusions of that exegesis that needs to be assessed. When we insist on coherence and non-contradiction as crucial to our hermeneutic, that is, when we let the light of clear thinking and our moral intuitions shine bright upon the Calvinist doctrines and the reasonings offered in defense of those doctrines, one can better see the full scope of their logical, moral, epistemological, theological, and practical incoherence and contradiction. I attempt to do this throughout this chapter and this site.
My readers have rightly observed that I repeatedly drive home this point. I do this to stress what I believe is the fundamental problem in this controversy. It is the hermeneutical divide. Non-Calvinists include coherence in their hermeneutic; Calvinists do not. It is only by repeating this issue from its many angles that the Calvinists’ theistic determinism shows itself as the extremely problematic theology that it is. As long as evangelical Christians continue to foster vague notions of what it means for God to be “sovereign” or subjectively pick and choose theistic determinism or human freedom according to what best fits the circumstance facing them at the time, and as long as they accept the suppression of their rational and moral faculties for the sake of a frail and false “evangelical unity” while turning a blind eye to the Calvinist’s linguistic legerdemain, disingenuousness, inconsistency with their underlying theology, and the incoherence and contradictions in their interpretations, then no advance towards a solution to this problem can be made. Lest we delude ourselves into thinking that two mutually exclusive theologies and soteriologies can both be true, that is, accurate interpretations of Scripture, we must demand intellectual responsibility and honesty in the interpretive task. We must adopt a hermeneutic of coherence.
Baggett and Walls think these additional God-given “philosophical” considerations (i.e., the use of our logical faculties and moral intuitions) are essential to a sound hermeneutic. They state,
“Using rationality and logic and our best philosophical tools and moral insights isn’t contrary to God’s plan for Christians. It’s all part of our God-given nature and his general revelation to us, by which we can determine in the first place that the Bible is God’s special revelation to us and by which we can best interpret it in a way that accords with God’s morally perfect and recognizably good nature.”[36]
Philosopher J. P. Moreland states,
“We are committed to Christianity in general, or some doctrinal position in particular, because we take that commitment to express what is true. And we are committed to the importance of our God-given faculty of mind to aid us in assessing what is true.”[37]
Philosopher and apologist Douglas Groothuis writes,
“There is no doubt that human reasoning and human reasoners have been adversely affected by the fall. However, reason itself – the logical structure of being and argument – is based on the eternal character of God as the Word (the Logos [John 1:1]), and on his bestowal of reason to creatures made in his image and likeness.[38] In that sense, reason is not fallen. Reason in itself cannot be fallen and remain reason.”[39]
C. S. Lewis summarizes the issue well when he writes,
“…if God’s moral judgment differs from ours so that our “black” may be His “white,” we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say “God is good,” while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say “God is we know not what.” And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying him. If He is not (in our sense) “good” we shall obey, if at all, only through fear – and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity – when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing – may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil worship.
…Beyond all doubt, His idea of “goodness” differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standard…This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent – a call which would be meaningless if God’s standard were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practice. He appeals to our existing moral judgment – ‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57)”[40]
Lewis identifies the existential and epistemological problem of Calvinism. That is, “…an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying him.” It seems that the kind of “fear” that springs from the unknowns of Calvinist theistic determinism and unconditional election is the same kind of “fear” that one would have in the presence of “an omnipotent Fiend.” Lewis’s reflections on the death of his wife Joy are worth repeating. Lewis struggled with the nature of God’s goodness. He wrote,
“Or could one seriously introduce the idea of a bad God, as it were by the back door, through a sort of extreme Calvinism? You could say we are fallen and depraved. We are so depraved that our ideas of goodness count for nothing; or worse than nothing – the very fact that we think something good is presumptive evidence that it is really bad. Now God has in fact – our worst fears are true – all the characteristics we regard as bad: unreasonableness, vanity, vindictiveness, injustice, cruelty. But all these blacks (as they seem to us) are really whites. It’s only our depravity that makes them look black to us.
And so what? This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes sponges God off the slate. The word good, applied to Him, becomes meaningless: like abracadabra. We have no motive for obeying him. Not even fear. It is true we have his threats and promises. But why should we believe them? If cruelty is from his point of view “good,” telling lies may be “good” too. Even if they are true, what then? If His ideas of good are so very different from ours, what he calls “Heaven” might be what we should call Hell, and vice-versa. Finally, if reality at its roots is so meaningless to us – or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles – what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else? This knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight.”[41]
Baggett and Walls state,
“God’s good can’t be our evil…We may not always see what God’s goodness entails, but we can be confident of some things it precludes.” [42] “…it is not just hard to reconcile unconditional reprobation with a morally perfect God, but simply impossible.”[43]
That has been the crux of the summary points listed above. We can tell what the Bible cannot mean when interpretive results generate real contradictions and incoherencies. As such, we must conclude that Calvinism is not what the Bible teaches, and therefore it is not worthy of our intellectual assent, let alone belief. The presuppositions of logical thought we all employ to reason and communicate cannot be dismissed when we read and interpret the Bible.
Where do certain interpretations lead us with respect to their logical and moral implications? One must take that question seriously and discern how the answer bears upon their hermeneutic. Logical and moral reasoning, along with a consistent application of what we know of the nature and character of God, are essential to hermeneutics. Rational and moral reasoning are elements of God’s general revelation; therefore, they cannot be dismissed in discerning the validity of proposed interpretations of his special revelation (i.e., the Bible) and our subsequent theological constructs built upon them.
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Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
The Truth of the Gospel 