Example 22 – Os Guinness: Both Are True, Use Them As Needed

Back to Chapter 11 – Examples of Calvinist Interpretive Incoherence

The Problem of God’s Sovereignty, Human Significance, and Human Freedom

Calvinist Os Guinness, in his book Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, writes about the history of Christianity’s influence in the world. He stresses the responsibility Christians have to effect change within their culture while also realizing that a sovereign God is continually at work to accomplish His purposes, which will culminate in the consummation of all things under the Lordship of Christ. This leads Guinness to reflect upon the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human free will. Although the controversy is usually stated as the problem between God’s sovereignty and human freedom or free will, in Chapter 5 titled “The Dynamics of the Kingdom,” Guinness briefly addresses the relationship between “God’s sovereignty” and what he calls “human significance.” I take it that his point is that “human significance” is a corollary of human freedom, that is, that even given God’s sovereign activity in the world, each of us retains “significance” because, in a genuinely meaningful sense, it is truly we who freely do what we do. This includes that our actions have meaning, value, and purpose. Such freedom is required for one’s life to have “significance,” that is, in the sense that the human person owns that significance. “Significance” and free will, or human freedom, are integrally related. But given a deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty, the problem of establishing genuinely meaningful “significance” in our living, choices, decisions, and actions remains. And Guinness admits the controversy and proceeds to handle it as follows.

“Few controversies among Christians are so fruitless as the perennial debate over God’s sovereignty and human significance, and it even pokes its nose into the issues we are discussing here too. For when we are thinking of cultural change, is the real work God’s or ours, or both? Overall, it is quite clear that the general discussion of the issue has commonly been unproductive. Far too many hours have been wasted, far too much ink spilt, and because of the disagreements far too many have dismissed others as not being Christians and have been dismissed by other Christians in their turn.”

You can sense the frustration Guinness has with this controversy. He continues to instruct us on how we should think about this matter.

Some simple truths are worth recalling in order to apply the point to this discussion. First, the Scriptures show plainly that reality contains both truths, and not just one or the other. God is sovereign, humans are significant, and it was God who made us so. Second, history shows equally plainly that human reason cannot explain both truths. Those who try to do so almost always end up emphasizing one truth to the exclusion of the other, one side majoring on divine sovereignty and the other on human significance. Third, the lesson of the Scriptures and Christian history is that we should rely firmly on both truths, and apply the one we most need when we most need it.”^[1]

We should observe here that Guinness presupposes that the biblical definition of God’s sovereignty is the deterministic Calvinist definition of sovereignty. Because of this presupposition, we know right off that he is a Calvinist and what tack he will take in attempting to resolve the problem his Calvinist view has created. So for Guinness, “sovereignty” is defined as theistic determinism, or universal divine causal determinism. As such, he has a serious problem to solve. Although he wouldn’t have this problem if he had searched out a more biblically coherent definition of sovereignty. So we should ask, “Why should we accept his deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty?” Where does the Bible indicate that divine sovereignty must equal a universal divine causal determinism? I submit to you that the “perennial debate” is the result of a misinterpretation of the biblical texts on the part of Calvinists like Guinness. I believe God is sovereign and humans are significant, but I don’t see why this should result in a fruitless controversy. It doesn’t need to be a controversy at all because the Bible doesn’t present God’s sovereignty as a universal divine causal determinism. If one presupposes this deterministic definition of sovereignty, of course, one creates a problem of human “significance” along with human freedom and responsibility. But that is a problem of your own creation; that is not what the Bible teaches.

How We Know Guinness is Wrong About God’s Sovereignty

I don’t see any problem between divine sovereignty and human freedom and significance. The controversy, which is not “fruitless” precisely because the Calvinist view is not biblical and needs to be challenged, only arises given the Calvinist deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty. Unless you define divine sovereignty as a universal divine causal determinism, there is no controversy like the one Guinness would have us think there is. His definition of sovereignty is not what the Bible teaches. How do I know this? Not only because in the Bible, “sovereignty” means to rule or reign, akin to the meaning of ‘Lord,’ and never conveys the idea of God’s comprehensive predetermination of ‘whatsoever comes to pass,’ but for two additional reasons. 1) First, I know Guinness is wrong about God’s sovereignty because of the nature of the problems that theistic determinism creates. Theistic determinism generates incoherence, inconsistency, and contradiction within Scripture and among its clear teachings. Scripture does not contain incoherence, inconsistency, or contradiction. Therefore, when you see these as the result of one’s interpretations, the problem is with the person’s interpretations, not the Bible. 2) Secondly, I know Guinness is wrong about God’s sovereignty because of what Guinness is going to tell us about how to handle the “perennial debate” he created by his theistic determinism. He is going to tell us to suppress our rational and moral faculties to retain his deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty. The types of logical and moral problems Guinness produces by embracing Calvinist determinism are indications that it is not what the Scripture teaches about God’s sovereignty. Note that if God has predetermined and causes all things, and causality is logically entailed by theistic determinism, how are humans significant, let alone free in any meaningful way? The robot and puppet analogies hold true. But Guinness stubbornly forges ahead and tries to remove himself and other Calvinists from the vortex of theistic determinism. But he pays a high intellectual and moral price in his attempt to do so. We see this in what follows.

Guinness’s Three ‘Simple Truths’: A Study in the Suppression of Reason

Guinness is now going to instruct us in three “simple truths” about how to handle this problem of sovereignty and human significance.

1) “First, the Scriptures show plainly that reality contains both truths, and not just one or the other. God is sovereign, humans are significant, and it was God who made us so.”

The Scriptures do not “plainly” show that “reality contains both truths.” Reality certainly does not “plainly” show us that God has predetermined all things because if that were the case, then God would be causally responsible for all the horrendous evil in the world, and he would be evil himself. We can see that theistic determinism has removed meaningful significance from the human creature in the way the Bible tells us that significance was bestowed, that is, in being made in the image of God, which includes freedom of the will. Guinness touches upon this point when he writes, “…humans are significant, and it was God who made us so.” God made us in his own image. This bestows ‘significance’ on us as human beings, and I take this ‘significance’ to be a positive thing from God. But think about this. What significance do the multitude of non-elect human beings, those whom God predestined to eternal condemnation and separation from himself, have in Guinness’s scheme of things? How is the life of one who is excluded from God’s salvation ‘significant’?

So we can plainly see that theistic determinism is in contradiction to human significance and freedom. So what is Guinness doing here? He’s putting back on Scripture the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and contradictions his misinterpretations of Scripture have created. Thus, he is impugning Scripture as contradictory because he is telling us the “…Scriptures show plainly that reality contains both truths.” Which leads us to Guinness’s second “simple truth.”

2) “Second, history shows equally plainly that human reason cannot explain both truths. Those who try to do so almost always end up emphasizing one truth to the exclusion of the other, one side majoring on divine sovereignty and the other on human significance.”

Guinness states, “…human reason cannot explain both truths.” What Guinness does to extricate himself from his contradiction is dismiss the cannons of reason as applicable here. To address the contradiction, Guinness, in typical Calvinist fashion, ignores it. He ignores his logical reasoning faculties that tell him he has a contradiction on his hands. That is, he adopts a hermeneutic of incoherence. Regarding two mutually exclusive theological propositions, he says, “Human reason cannot explain both truths.” He also states, “Reality contains both truths, and not just one or the other.” When Guinness states, “the Scriptures show plainly that reality contains both truths,” he reveals that he has adopted a hermeneutic of incoherence and has embraced interpretive relativism. Note that the fact that the two “truths” are mutually exclusive or contradictory does not matter to Guinness. This does not cause him to question the interpretive validity of one or the other of these supposed “truths.” Obviously, in that they are contradictory interpretations of Scripture, they cannot both be true. Either one is false and the other true, or both are false. But this does not matter to Guinness because he has suppressed his reason and moral faculties.

This exemplifies the hermeneutical divide in which the non-Calvinist sees this contradiction as interpretively significant. It is indicative of a misinterpretation of the text. But not so for Guinness or Calvinists. So Guinness exemplifies the hermeneutic of incoherence that reveals why the controversy is “fruitless” and prolongs the “perennial debate.” If Guinness and Calvinists were to adopt a hermeneutic of coherence, the debate would be resolved. And why shouldn’t this “perennial debate” be resolved? Surely there is one hermeneutical truth that all evangelicals can affirm that will guide the way here, that is, that Scripture cannot contradict itself.

In addition, Guinness’s interpretive relativism and hermeneutic of incoherence insulates the first “simple truth” that Scripture teaches the Calvinist definition of sovereignty as deterministic from any rational and moral interpretive or hermeneutical critique. It allows for Guinness’s “third lesson of the Scriptures and Christian history.”

3) “Third, the lesson of the Scriptures and Christian history is that we should rely firmly on both truths, and apply the one we most need when we most need it.”

This third “lesson” or “truth” is, “apply the one we most need when we most need it.” We have already seen how Guinness suppressed his reason and moral intuition in making the statement, “human reason cannot explain both truths,” while ignoring the fact that it is human reason that has identified the ‘truths’ as contradictory. And this brings us to a serious problem. Guinness has not only abandoned reason and moral intution, adopted a hermeneutic of incoherence, and an interpretive relativism, but he is now also advocating a pick-and-choose approach to the practical application of these mutually exclusive “truths.” You pick and choose whichever of these mutually exclusive “truths” that you feel will address the situation at hand. So, not only is he duplicitous, but he is telling us the Bible is duplicitous.

Answering Guinness’s Question

Let’s move on to answer Guinness’s question, “For when we are thinking of cultural change, is the real work God’s or ours, or both?” Guinness says that the answer is both. Now, certainly, the Scriptures show plainly that reality contains both truths – God is sovereign, and humans are significant in the sense that they are meaningful to God, others, and substantially free. Therefore, God acts in history for cultural change in different ways (e.g., either directly or through human persons), and human persons act in history for cultural change (e.g., in ways that affirm and cooperate with God, but often in ways contrary to God’s will). But I submit that Guinness’s answer cannot be “both,” given how he understands and defines God’s sovereignty according to the Calvinist definition of theistic determinism. For Calvinism, the correct and only answer is that the “real work” is God’s. Full stop. “Ours” or “both” are not an option within the Calvinist’s theological paradigm because the Calvinist’s definition of sovereignty is a universal divine causal determinism. God, having predetermined all things solely by his will alone, is the source and cause of all that occurs – both good and evil. For Guinness to hold to cultural change being “both” God’s work and our work, is incoherent with his deterministic definition of divine sovereignty. We can therefore confidently say that the Scriptures do not contain both truths in light of how Reformed Calvinists, like Os Guinness, understand divine sovereignty.

What we see Guinness doing here exemplifies what is true for many theologians and Christians, that is, Calvinist determinism is their default position on divine sovereignty, and that position is not to be questioned. All other biblical data on the nature of man and salvation must somehow be manipulated to “fit” into the Calvinist mold of theistic determinism. If such manipulation runs roughshod logically and morally over other biblical doctrines, so be it. The Calvinist definition of God’s sovereignty as a theistic determinism is biblical bedrock.

Interpretive Coherence as Necessary to Valid Interpetation

When the Calvinist claims ‘the Bible teaches both,’ this is recognizably incoherent. And this is the fundamental hermeneutical issue before us that Guinness does not acknowledge. I submit that the Scriptures do not “show plainly” that sovereignty is to be defined as a universal divine causal determinism as in Calvinism precisely because such an interpretation leads to logical and moral incoherence. This fact must be incorporated into our hermeneutic (see Chapter 4). When logical and moral coherence, consistency, and non-contradiction are taken into account and incorporated into our hermeneutic, and not simply ignored, these serve as reliable indicators of the validity or invalidity of an interpretation. Coherence must be incorporated into one’s hermeneutic for us to discern a valid interpretation of the biblical texts. Incoherence is a tell-tale sign that the text is being misunderstood. Rationally sound, coherent interpretation is biblically faithful interpretation. Guinness is willing to ignore coherence in favor of maintaining a deterministic view of sovereignty – the very view of sovereignty that generates the fruitlessness and non-productive discussions he decries. But this fruitlessness and non-productiveness is precisely what one would expect in a dialogue where one party can dismiss logical and moral considerations. Perhaps the inquiry would not be fruitless or unproductive if we incorporated logical and moral coherence into our hermeneutic which would cause us to re-examine the Calvinist definition of sovereignty.

I contend that, as far as the Bible is concerned, divine sovereignty cannot be and is not presented as a universal divine causal determinism. I also submit that if Guinness were to define sovereignty biblically as God’s non-deterministic but sure reign over all his creation, his problem disappears. We affirm God can be sovereign in the sense that Scripture presents sovereignty as God’s active participation and intervention in history and in the ruling and reigning over all his creation to bring what he has willed to pass, while humans freely and significantly live in responsive relationship to each other and God. Scripture does not require a definition of sovereignty defined as God having preordained “whatsoever comes to pass,” which entails that he is the sole will and cause behind and in all that occurs, including evil. This is nothing other than theistic determinism, and any determinism is antithetical to the biblical witness to human freedom, sin, potentiality, possibility, and contingency. And yet of course, neither is human freedom to be understood as absolute. It is God’s prerogative to so move a person or persons to do that which he wants accomplished in certain situations, but such divine means are not of the nature of a universal divine causal determinism. They are the involvement of the personal Creator God demonstrating His love for His human creatures in Jesus, the very special creatures He made in His image, for the purpose of a free response of love to God in return.

If Guinness is going to make these claims presupposing a Calvinist deterministic definition of sovereignty, then he cannot merely dismiss the logical and moral entailments. He is going to have to show how that view of sovereignty is logically compatible with human freedom, or as he puts it, “human significance.” Interestingly, he seems to soften his determinism when he says, “God is sovereign, humans are significant, and it was God who made us so.” So “sovereignty” may include God’s prerogative to make creatures that are substantially free from his control, and yet he remains sovereign. Creaturely freedom is no threat to a sovereign God’s “sovereignty.” This would be a non-deterministic definition of sovereignty; one that a non-Calvinist maintains is closer to the biblical testimony and that he could embrace. One wonders why Guinness does not pursue this option further. I submit that this indicates the strong hold that the traditional Calvinist interpretations have on the minds of many Christians. It seems Guinness ultimately holds to the Calvinist deterministic view of sovereignty because of his study of “the Scriptures and Christian history.” But for the reasons I give above and provide throughout this website, this cannot be the proper interpretation of the Scriptures.

In addition, he takes the typical Calvinist “outs” of incomprehensibility and soteriological relativism – the Bible teaches both and use each as needed. The rational and moral incoherencies that his deterministic definition of God’s sovereignty generates do not influence his hermeneutic and therefore these logical and moral problems do not translate into determining factors as to the validity or invalidity of his interpretations.

The Questions Guinness and Calvinists Need to Answer

Surely the canons of reason hold in biblical interpretation. If they don’t, Guinness and the Calvinists would have to explain why they don’t and what the interpretive implications would be if they don’t. Or, on the other hand, if human freedom and significance are logically compatible with the Calvinist definitions of sovereignty, then why is there a problem? He should explain how they are compatible. Just to assert “Scripture contains both truths” is just that, a mere assertion that begs the question. To assert “human reason cannot explain both truths” is to have presupposed a deterministic definition of sovereignty, which again is begging the question. But it is also a prime example of the suppression of reason. It is a willful choice to cavalierly ignore what reason does tell us, that is, that there is a contradiction here. And once all the mere assertions, question-begging, and suppression of reason are firmly put into place, to write, “that we should rely firmly on both truths, and apply the one we most need when we most need it,” thereby countenancing theological and soteriological relativism, is rather easy!

Guinness obviously sees the problem here. And since he does know he has run into the perennial debate between sovereignty and free will, and now here, the idea of significance, we would think that he could admit the problem is his deterministic definition of sovereignty. But he will not accept that there is a contradiction here. He insists that there are two “truths” here. But look at what he has done. He has dismissed the very thing that tells him that his interpretation of Scripture is flawed. He has dismissed his logical reasoning and moral intuitions. He says the Bible teaches both, but ignores the very faculty that indicates whether he is rightly interpreting the Bible. So the bottom line here is that he is operating on a flawed hermeneutic. His interpretive principles allow him to glean mutually incompatible or contradictory interpretations of biblical texts without that being significant as to the validity of those interpretations. That is exactly what we see Guinness doing here. So, in the end, Guinness is going to have to explain how it is that logical and moral coherence are not essential and necessary elements of good interpretation. Guinness cannot talk about “human significance” without first grappling with “interpretive significance.”

I find it interesting that Guinness’s reasoning faculties can detect that something is problematic between the Calvinist definition of sovereignty and human significance, but he does not have the confidence that this same reasoning should inform his hermeneutic. If “human reason cannot explain both truths,” but human reason detects a problem between both propositions, then perhaps the problem is not with human reason but that one of the “truths” is not true. And in these controversies, the common denominator is always determinism, whether naturalistic or theistic. Hence, one of the “truths” is not really an accurate interpretation of the biblical text. That “truth” is the Calvinists’ theistic determinism, which is, of course, no “truth” at all. If “human reason cannot explain both truths,” how would we know whether both are “truths” of Scripture? Why would human reason fail us in arbitrating this problem? Perhaps, rather, Reformed Calvinism does not have an accurate interpretation of Scripture on divine sovereignty.

Whether or not the Calvinists’ interpretations of sovereignty, election, predestination, etc., are accurate and true is the ultimate issue at hand. And if deterministic sovereignty is a priori declared to be an inviolable truth when it is not, then of course “reason cannot explain both truths” precisely because something unreasonable is afoot. If reason is put out of court when reason sends up its red flags of incoherence or contradiction, then nothing more can be said regarding the validity of those interpretations. And therefore, like Guinness says, “…we should rely firmly on both truths, and apply the one we most need when we most need it.” But this is how the Calvinist insulates himself from rational theological critique. It is this Calvinists’ duplicity, that is, reason works except when it critiques my theology, that perpetuates this controversy. It is what causes non-Calvinists to be left scratching their heads perplexed, while the Calvinist claims that, because Scripture is divine revelation and the mind of man is affected by sin that gives him permission to dismiss interpretive incoherence. The best that the Calvinist can do is chalk his problem up to “mystery” or “incomprehensibility of the ways of God.” And these responses along with “the Bible teaches both,” are ad hoc and question-begging.

I do not think this controversy is “fruitless.” Rather, the controversy has been subverted by outright indifference, various rationalizations, the suppression of reason, and other avoidance techniques that seek to insulate the Reformed Calvinist doctrines from the critiques of clear thinking and sound exegesis while deflecting Calvinists themselves (and others) from grappling with the hermeneutical implications of their problematic deterministic definitions of sovereignty and election as unconditional. The “perennial debate” persists only while divine sovereignty and election are defined as they are in Calvinism. This division among Christians will persist as long as evangelicals refuse to delineate a hermeneutic that embraces logical, moral, and theological coherence. If you think a sound hermeneutic must include these, then you cannot be a Calvinist. We cannot gain biblical clarity regarding these key doctrines as long as the Calvinist interpretations are presupposed to be the true biblical teaching, while any substantive logical, moral, and theological critique of them is put out of court. The Calvinist theological position is held regardless of the negative logical, moral, theological, ministerial, and gospel implications. My thesis is that Calvinism operates on a deficient hermeneutic, that is, a hermeneutic of incoherence.

In that, Guinness’s Calvinist determinism has a profound effect on the content and proclamation of the gospel as “good news,” it seems to me that he, like all Calvinists, will have to take a stand regarding what he believes the content of “the good news” to be and whether that content is consistent with his Calvinist deterministic “doctrines of grace.”

But then again, perhaps Guinness will hold to the Calvinist deterministic soteriology and “gospel” of exclusion as defined by their “doctrines of grace” (i.e., TULIP) in one situation, and yet also hold to a free will soteriology and gospel of inclusion as defined by the non-Calvinist in another situation, without a concern for their incompatibility due to his relativism that allows him to apply the one he most needs when he most needs it.

Go to Example 23 – Mohler on Naturalistic Determinism and Theistic Determinism: A Distinction without a Difference

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Footnotes

[1] Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 90-91. (Emphasis mine)