Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
1. The Calvinist’s universal divine causal determinism is in direct contradiction with the overwhelming testimony in Scripture to human volition, contingency, potentiality, possibility, invitations, exhortations, warnings, judgments, and rewards. As such, this determinism has Scripture contradicting itself. Scripture cannot contradict itself. Therefore, Calvinist theistic determinism is false.
The foremost logical contradiction in Calvinist theology is the insistence that all things are predetermined by God while also maintaining that not all things are predetermined by God. Calvinists speak of an eternal divine decree and divine sovereignty that is deterministic while also maintaining contingency, genuine human freedom, and responsibility. Calvinists assert that people make genuine decisions of their own that affect themselves and others for which they are responsible and will be held accountable by God. Yet they also assert that God has predetermined all things, even every thought, desire, and decision of every person. These propositions are in real contradiction.
According to the Calvinist, God’s eternal decree by which He unalterably predetermined “whatsoever comes to pass” even before He created the world, includes the minutest details of history and each person’s every thought, attitude, desire, belief, decision, action, and eternal destiny. God is therefore the cause of all that occurs. According to the Calvinists, this meticulous predetermination enables God to be sovereign over all of his creation as they define sovereignty. But it also precludes any meaningful sense of human freedom and responsibility, thereby failing to coherently account for the overwhelming amount of the biblical witness to contingency and human freedom.
Hence, the fact that the Calvinist doctrines of the eternal divine decree and sovereignty understood as a universal divine causal determinism lead to logical and moral inconsistencies with the testimony of Scripture as to the nature of human freedom and responsibility, experiential reality and God’s interactions and relations with individuals and groups of people as being genuinely contingent, is sufficient to show that Calvinism is false and a misinterpretation of the relevant texts from which it is supposedly derived. Determinism and contingency are logically contradictory. Therefore, the Scriptures overwhelmingly testify to a non-deterministic worldview that is logically and morally incompatible with Calvinism’s theistic determinism.
This judgment rests upon my proposed thesis. The above conclusions, and those to follow, are reached only when rational and moral coherence are incorporated into one’s hermeneutic. The Calvinist ignores this matter of logical and moral coherence in their interpretations of the text. Proof-texting, or even providing a detailed exegesis of a text, while ignoring the rational coherence of one’s exegesis with other texts (i.e., the hermeneutical principle of context) and doctrines, is a flawed hermeneutic. It fails to correctly disclose the true intent of both the human and divine authors. We can see that incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction cannot be an acceptable result of our exegesis and interpretations of Scripture. The human and divine authors do not and cannot contradict themselves. Coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction need to be incorporated into our hermeneutic.
2. Calvinism is self-defeating and rationally unaffirmable.
Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig correctly observes that,
“Determinism is literally self-defeating – it is rationally unaffirmable – because its very affirmation would undermine the rationality of that affirmation. In affirming determinism to be true, you are in effect affirming that that decision is not rationally made but simply determined to be true. So universal causal determinism, it seems to me, cannot be rationally affirmed.”[8]
3. Calvinists are being inconsistent when they condemn, critique, bemoan, rebuke, or regret anything that happens in the world, including the evil things.
On Calvinism, God foreordained all these things to occur; therefore, on what rational or moral basis does the Calvinist ground his complaints, rebukes, or regrets? When he does make these condemnations, he is being inconsistent with his belief that God has predetermined and caused those very things for his own glory. The Calvinist is in effect speaking out against the plans and purposes of God and against His glorifying Himself through these things – even the evil that occurs daily. Logically speaking, the Calvinist ought to rejoice in all that happens – including the most horrendous evils, for God has ordained them for his own glory.
4. If Calvinism is the truth of God’s Word, then God has predetermined that most Christians resist and reject Calvinism and thereby reject his truth.
Calvinists list some reasons why most Christians don’t believe Calvinism. Three of these are a) lack of Bible knowledge, b) pride and arrogance, and c) that God is arbitrary or not good or fair.[9]
But as theologian Leighton Flowers points out, there can only be two reasons why people resist or reject Calvinism.
a) If Calvinism is in error, then most Christians are astute enough to see that it doesn’t make sense logically, morally, or theologically. They stand on their theological, intellectual, and moral ground in this regard and reject Calvinism.
b) If Calvinism is true, the reason why most resist or reject it is because “God sovereignly and unchangeably decreed their resistance for his own glory.” Leighton explains,
“ …So, if Calvinism is true, then God has predestined most of his own children to resist his truth so as to glorify himself. The very idea that God unchangeably predestines his own children to reject his own truth for his own glory is so intuitively false that I don’t need to refute it. I just need to make sure everyone understands that’s what Calvinism entails so they know to reject it.” [10]
It is important to note what Leighton is doing here. He is employing a hermeneutic of coherence. He is not discounting what his logical faculties and moral intuitions are telling him about what is entailed by universal divine causal determinism (i.e., Calvinism). What is entailed by Calvinism is that God causes his own children to reject his truth. Does that sound right to you?
The Calvinist will protest, “Whether it sounds right to you is not the issue. Indeed, that is the problem here. What the Scripture teaches is the most important thing, not what sounds right to your human reason or moral intuition.” But this only begs the question. What the Scripture teaches is just what we are grappling with. Does the Scripture teach Calvinism when Calvinism lands us in logical and moral incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction? Does the Scripture teach Calvinism when such teachings are incoherent with what that same Scripture tells us about God being a God of truth and that he “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Yet, according to the Calvinist, God has predetermined that many people be assigned to eternal death and that even his own children reject the truth of God’s Word (i.e., Calvinism).
Therefore, what role do you think logical reflection and coherence, along with your moral intuitions, play in the interpretive process?
5. We can know a contradiction when we see one.
My contention is that human reasoning, although affected by sin, is still capable of discerning contradictions in interpretation. This is uncontrovertible. And, it will not do to use the divine inspiration of Scripture as an excuse for incoherence in one’s interpretations. One cannot cavalierly dismiss incoherence by quoting “God’s ways are higher than our ways.” Rather, this is a matter of what principles are to be employed to determine the validity of one’s interpretation of that divine revelation. And that is a different matter of a literary nature. Merely to claim that we cannot understand the Calvinist’s interpretations because we would expect any revelation that is from God to be incomprehensible to our finite minds misses the point of the hermeneutical principles involved in interpreting a written text and gives license for any and all interpretations. It opens the door to interpretive relativism and the question-begging claims that because an interpretation is mine, it must be correct.
The fact that Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike detect a contradiction here cannot be cavalierly dismissed as irrelevant for discerning the validity of the Calvinist’s interpretations of Scripture. They cannot hide behind “mystery.” Granted, Scripture is complex and often difficult to understand, but it is not difficult at all regarding most of what it says about God, man, and salvation. I submit that the issue is not one in which we are left with too little information or too much that is unknown. Rather, it is a situation in which what we do know, we know quite well, and enough to see that we are not dealing here with an incomprehensible mystery at all. We are dealing with an actual contradiction. Obviously, we are confronted with a real contradiction in Calvinism, and therefore a gross misinterpretation.
Hence, if we conclude that the biblical witness is to be interpreted coherently, and we take at “face value” the Scripture’s witness to contingency, human freedom, and responsibility, we must then reject Calvinism’s determinism in favor of other coherent interpretations of the Scripture on God’s sovereignty and election. The more promising interpretations will be those that evidence a more responsible examination of the text according to accepted evangelical grammatical-historical methods and hermeneutical principles, which include coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction.
6. Calvinism contains a real contradiction, not an apparent contradiction.
Calvinists claim that the contradiction created by their determinism with human freedom is only an “apparent contradiction.” But we must ask, ‘What is an “apparent contradiction?”‘ Can there be such a thing? Why does one need to designate something as an “apparent” contradiction? Have they recognized a contradiction when they see one? If they have to label their interpretive conclusions a “contradiction,” then perhaps it is a real contradiction. But we should also ask, how does one discern between a real and an “apparent” contradiction? I would like to know.
Obviously, we can perceive these propositions as being contradictory. Therefore, on what basis does the Calvinist justify declaring the contradiction to be only “apparent?” To merely label the contradiction “apparent” does not make it not a contradiction or make the problem go away. To only assert something does not make it so.
The Calvinist has a burden of proof here. He needs to provide an argument regarding how his universal divine causal determinism is logically compatible with human freedom, responsibility, and the biblical witness to the manifold non-deterministic nature of God’s relationship with human persons and vice versa. He needs to explain why the contradiction is only “apparent.”
7. Some Calvinists attempt to be logically consistent here and therefore state that there is no such thing as human freedom.
If it is God who determines all things and therefore must ultimately be the cause of all the thoughts, desires, beliefs, decisions, and actions of every person, then persons are not free moral agents. They do not cause their own actions in any meaningful sense. Some Calvinists recognize this. They acknowledge the non-negotiability of the laws of logic for rational thought and communication. They are, therefore, honest enough to “bite the bullet” as to the logical entailments of their determinism. That is, they conclude that there is no such thing as human freedom. Do you agree? (Note that whatever your answer is, on Calvinism, it will have been predetermined for you by God!)
8. Most Calvinists claim that ‘the Bible teaches both,’ that is, divine determinism and human freedom.
As to human freedom, Calvinists state that all persons can and will be held morally responsible by God for their actions, including their acceptance or rejection of the gospel. Calvinists also claim that it is God alone who determines all the thoughts, desires, and actions of all persons and unconditionally elects some to salvation and others to reprobation. Calvinists claim these contradictory propositions are both divinely revealed in Scripture, but how they cohere is incomprehensible to us. They are, therefore, a divine or “high mystery.”
The question before us is, of course, whether this Calvinist understanding is really what the Bible teaches and how we can know that. I argue that the logical and moral incoherence, inconsistency, and contradictions in Calvinism are tell-tale signs that it is not the teaching of Scripture. Calvinists must ultimately dispense with coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction to maintain their theological position. Although they present exegesis to support their deterministic definitions of sovereignty and unconditional election while attempting to acknowledge the biblical witness to human freedom and responsibility, the resulting incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions generated are not sufficiently or convincingly addressed.[11]
9. Despite attempts to logically reconcile their deterministic definition of sovereignty with free will and human responsibility, ultimately Calvinists will flee to “mystery.”
Calvinists ultimately claim their position is a “mystery.” But this begs the question. Calvinists provide no logical or moral justification for the problematic nature of their interpretive conclusions. Justification and validity in interpretation involve logically and morally reasoned thought and evidence. By claiming their interpretations are ultimately a “mystery,” these are abandoned by Calvinists as hermeneutically irrelevant to their exegetical and interpretative conclusions. I contend that this is an explicit admission that Calvinism is logically contradictory and morally deficient. Again, the Calvinist maintains the blatant contradiction that all things are predetermined and caused by God, while also claiming that all things are not predetermined and caused by God but also by the will of the human creature themselves.[12]
Hence, it is only on pain of irrationality that we can embrace Calvinism. Something is wrong at the heart of its exegeses and interpretations. Therefore, one must first accept a hermeneutic of incoherence to become and remain a Calvinist. The logical and moral reasoning by which we made the above determinations must be suppressed for one to accept and remain a Calvinist. Logical and moral reasoning must be substituted for “glorifying God in a mystery.” But this fails to address the question of whether exegeses and interpretations of Scripture that lead to incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction can ever be valid. The Calvinist dare not answer this question in the affirmative lest he indict the determinism that is at the very heart of his theology. I will argue that, based on a hermeneutic of coherence, this determinism and the “doctrines of grace” that flow from it are misinterpretations of Scripture.
- Calvinist attempts to incorporate genuine, significant human free will into their theistic determinism through “compatibilism” are unconvincing. They are also incoherent.
Human free will is an undeniable reality. Substantial, meaningful free will (and by implication culpability, responsibility, praiseworthiness, blameworthiness, etc.) entails a) that you are the sole author of your actions and, b) that you could have done otherwise. Such a definition is supported everywhere throughout Scripture. Calvinists’ claim that as long as you are acting out of your beliefs, thoughts, desires, and wishes, you are acting freely while also claiming that it is God who determines all your beliefs, thoughts, desires, and wishes[13], is not a coherent concept of human freedom. It reduces to “God can predetermine and cause you to do something freely.” But this is incoherent. It is a logical impossibility. God cannot predetermine and cause someone to do something freely.
C. S. Lewis, writing on God’s omnipotence, makes a point that is pertinent here. He states,
“His omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.”…It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”[14]
Furthermore, neither can human beings be justly judged as responsible for doing things they are not responsible for doing; that is, for things God has predetermined that they do. If the person is unable to respond, then they are not “response-able.” Hence, they cannot be justly held culpable for their actions. This, of course, has profound implications for jurisprudence.
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Back to Chapter 5 – The Nature and Scope of the Calvinist Difficulties
The Truth of the Gospel 