Theology

A Short Answer to a Quick Question for Calvinists

Arminian theologian Roger Olson has posted a quick question for his Calvinist interlocutors (whoever they may be):

To my Calvinist interlocutors I ask: If free will as uncaused choice is logically incoherent, what about God’s decision to create the world?

Dr. Olson apparently thinks this raises a problem for Calvinists, but I’m really not sure why. The idea, presumably, is that God’s decision to create was uncaused and therefore the idea of an uncaused choice must be logically coherent. But the question has several problematic assumptions lying behind it.

In the first place, few contemporary defenders of libertarian free will (LFW) would concede that it entails uncaused choices. I suspect most Christian philosophers today who hold to LFW accept some version of agent causation. But on that view, free choices aren’t uncaused; they’re caused by the agent (with no prior sufficient cause or explanation). If Dr. Olson thinks that LFW entails uncaused choices (as he seems to do, given the way he poses his question) then I’d say he’s in a minority even among his fellow libertarians.

But leave that quibble aside. The main problem here is that Calvinists needn’t be committed to the idea that LFW is logically incoherent. Yes, there are some Calvinists who take that view. But it isn’t implied by Calvinism as such. A Calvinist can consistently hold that LFW is a coherent idea but that it isn’t actually instantiated (i.e., creatures could have had libertarian free will but don’t in fact have it).

In fact, a Calvinist can go further and say that while LFW may be coherent as such (i.e., there is nothing incoherent about the idea of LFW) it is necessarily false that any creatures have LFW. He may hold (as many Calvinists do) that creaturely LFW is incompatible with divine omniscience or meticulous divine providence. And if God possesses his attributes of omniscience and sovereignty essentially (i.e., he could not fail to possess those attributes) then creaturely LFW must be impossible in the broadly logical sense: there is no possible world in which creatures have LFW. (This is not to say, of course, that creatures couldn’t have free will in some other significant sense.) But it doesn’t follow from the claim that creaturely LFW is broadly logically impossible that LFW as such is logically incoherent. The Calvinist could consistently hold either of the following views:

(1) LFW is logically coherent, and God has LFW, and necessarily no creature has LFW.

(2) LFW is logically coherent, but God does not have LFW, and necessarily no creature has LFW.

So it’s hard to see why Calvinists qua Calvinists should be unsettled by Dr. Olson’s question. He relates an email exchange with John Frame in which (as he recalls) he extracted a concession from Dr. Frame to the effect that LFW must be coherent if we grant that God makes free choices. But why should we consider any such concession significant? It doesn’t raise any special problem for Calvinism.

One final observation. Dr. Olson’s question is also premised on the assumption that we ought to grant that God has LFW if we claim that God freely chose to create. But that assumption isn’t beyond question either. Steve Cowan, for example, has argued that there are problems with construing divine freedom in standard libertarian terms. So this assumption can’t simply be taken for granted. But even if it turns out that God must have LFW, this shouldn’t cause any Calvinist to blush. Calvinists have plenty of other good reasons to deny that creatures have LFW without having to argue that LFW as such is logically incoherent.

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Interview with Christ the Center

I was recently interviewed for the Christ the Center program by the good folk at Reformed Forum, and they’ve just posted the audio on their website. I’ve enjoyed and benefited from listening to a number of their podcasts over the last couple of years, so I was honored to be invited to contribute to one of them. Among other things we discussed presuppositional apologetics, John Frame’s perspectivalism, and my book on theological paradox.

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Gordon Clark’s Paradoxical View of the Trinity

Some years ago I wrote a short article defending some of Van Til’s remarks on the Trinity and offering some criticisms of Gordon Clark’s view of the Trinity. In that article I noted a point of disagreement with Steve Hays. Whereas Steve had argued that Clark’s view reduces to modalism, I argued that his position is clearly a form of social trinitarianism (which I’ve contended elsewhere is not a form of monotheism and is thus unacceptable as an interpretation of orthodox trinitarian doctrine).

Well, after re-reading some of Clark’s writings on this issue, I’ve changed my mind. I’m happy to report that I no longer disagree with Steve. But that’s not to say I’ve abandoned my earlier conclusion. Rather, I now think we were both right (which is a much more agreeable position to take).

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Response to Gary Crampton

The December 2009 issue of The Trinity Review featured a review of my book. The review, which is highly critical, was written by Gary Crampton. I’ve posted a response on my website. It’s lengthy and forthright; but given the serious deficiencies of the review, it had to be.

I have copied below the section on Gordon Clark’s treatments of the Trinity and the Incarnation, because it may be of wider interest.

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This is the Voice of the Mysterians…

The Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella, has turned his attention to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation in recent weeks. In one post he makes a preliminary critique of “Negative and Positive Trinitarian Mysterianism”, drawing on Dale Tuggy’s excellent “Trinity” article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Since Dale’s article discusses my defense of theological paradox under the heading of “Positive Mysterianism” I decided that any self-respecting Mysterian ought to speak up in his own defense — and I did so, here and here. The whole comment thread is worth a read.

Update 1: The conversation continues here, on the question of whether materialists can also move in mysterian ways.

Update 2: Further discussion can be found here, on the question of whether inconceivability entails impossibility.

Update 3: Still further discussion here, as atheist philosopher Peter Lupu tries to show that my position leads to theological skepticism, and I demur in the combox.

Update 4: Peter Lupu takes another shot, this time focusing on whether divine revelation could warrant the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity is a MACRUE.

Update 5: Peter Lupu strikes again! Does my proposal face the specter of “semantic defeat”? He thinks so; I say no.

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The High One Who Dwells With the Lowly

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)

Is there any other single verse in Scripture that so beautifully expresses and balances the transcendence of God and the immanence of God?

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Calvinism, Assurance, and Inerrancy

I’m pretty sure that by now I’ve heard all the major objections to Calvinism. Some of them deserve to be taken seriously, although none are weighty enough to overturn the balance (or rather imbalance) of biblical evidence. Others objections, however, I find hard to credit at all. An example of the latter is the claim that the Calvinist doctrine of unconditional election undermines assurance of salvation. Only this week a student was telling me about a professor at a nearby liberal arts college who had wielded this objection in his theology class. The objection is rarely articulated with precision, but as best I can make out the idea is that a Calvinist can’t enjoy assurance of salvation because he’ll always be fretting about whether or not he’s really elect. What if he’s a reprobate after all? He longs to peer into the secret will of God, but all in vain — for as Deuteronomy 29:29 declares, the “secret things” belong to the Lord God alone.

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Inverted Phariseeism

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

One of my colleagues, John Currid, preached a convicting message from this parable at RTS-Charlotte on Tuesday. (I hope the audio will eventually become available at RTS on iTunes U.) Quoting from Spurgeon and McCheyne, among others, he reminded us that pride, fueled by human accolades, is often a besetting sin for ministers of the gospel.

It brought to mind (by way of contrast) a few times I’ve heard this parable expounded in such a way as to undermine its very point. In those renderings, the Pharisee stands for “them” (those self-righteous religious folk, trusting in their own good works) and the tax collector stands for “us” (good evangelical Protestants who trust in Christ alone for justification). By the end of the message one could barely resist praying, “God, I thank you that I am not like that Pharisee!”

It’s quite possible to preach the the doctrine of justification by faith alone in such a way as to practically contradict it. Ironically, Reformed churches may be most vulnerable to this error, simply because they (rightly) place such emphasis on that doctrine “by which the church stands or falls” (as Luther famously put it). We fall into the trap of taking pride in our celebration of a doctrine that repudiates all pride!

But one implication of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which perhaps needs to be emphasized in Reformed settings, is that we aren’t justified by the doctrine itself. We aren’t justified by faith in the doctrine of justification by faith alone! We’re justified by faith in Christ alone. That is the precious, glorious truth of the doctrine. We don’t put our trust in any good works, including our good doctrinal works. Recognizing our utter spiritual bankruptcy, we look wholly outside ourselves to the perfect sufficient atoning work of Jesus Christ.

Is this theological nit-picking? No, I think it makes all the difference in the world. It’s the difference between anti-Phariseeism and inverted Phariseeism.

Happy Reformation Day!

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