Against Calvinism

Rescuing God's Reputation from Radical Reformed Theology

Roger E. Olson

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780310575955
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Denominazioni cristiane

A respectful approach to the debate over Reformed theology.

Calvinist theology has been debated and promoted for centuries. Roger Olson suggests that Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, holds an unwarranted place in our list of accepted theologies and certainly shouldn’t be understood as the only authentic Christian theology.

In Against Calvinism, readers will find scholarly arguments disputing some points of Calvinist theology and how it affects God’s reputation. Olson draws on a variety of sources, including Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, to support his critique of Calvinism and the more historically rich, biblically faithful alternative theologies he proposes.

Addressing what many evangelical Christians are concerned about today?so-called “new Calvinism,” a movement embraced by a generation labeled as “young, restless, Reformed” ?Against Calvinism is the only book of its kind to offer objections from a non-Calvinist perspective to the current wave of Calvinism among Christian youth.

As a companion to Michael Horton’s For Calvinism, readers will be able to compare contrasting perspectives and form their own opinions on the merits and weaknesses of Calvinism.

APPENDIX 1

CALVINIST ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE GOD’S REPUTATION

Throughout time, but especially in our time, certain Calvinists have recognized the problems their view of God’s sovereignty poses for God’s reputation and have offered solutions that allegedly relieve God of being the author of sin and evil. In other words, these are attempts to rescue God’s goodness in light of God’s absolute foreordination and rendering certain of all things down to the smallest details, but especially the evil decisions and actions of people. If God is absolutely sovereign over all, without self-limitation for the sake of creaturely free will (ability to do otherwise including the ability to thwart God’s will), how is God not the author of sin and evil? And how are creatures rather than God responsible for evil?

Let’s begin with a test case that will be used throughout to examine whether these strategies work to alleviate the problem: the fall of Adam in the garden of Eden. All Calvinists agree with Calvin himself that God foreordained and rendered certain the fall with all its consequences. We have already seen some of the ways in which Calvinists attempt to get God off the hook, so to speak, for being guilty of Adam’s sin. How is it, then, that God is not guilty and Adam was?

The first strategy commonly used is to appeal to secondary causes. This is a philosophical concept derived from Aristotle’s philosophy; medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) drew on it to explain how God assures that everything happens but is not guilty of sin and evil. Calvin used this concept to put distance between God’s sovereign power working out all things according to his purpose and the creature’s evil decisions and actions. Contemporary Calvinist Paul Helm says:

There is a long and honourable tradition according to which there are both primary and secondary causes. The primary cause (or causes) is the divine upholding; the secondary causes are the causal powers of created things; the power of the seed to germinate, of a person to be angry or to walk down the street, and so on.¹

Few Christians (or theists in general) would disagree with this use of the concepts of primary and secondary causes. God is, of course, the creator and sustainer of everything outside himself and therefore has to uphold and even concur (even if only by bare permission) with whatever happens in the creaturely realm. Creatures have no absolute, autonomous power of their own over against God such that they can be and act totally apart from him.

However, problems arise when this distinction between primary and secondary causes is applied to divine providence to solve the problem of God’s goodness and creatures’ evil. For example, Calvinist Loraine Boettner argues that Satan was the “proximate cause” (the same as secondary cause) of the fall of Adam. This, he says, removes all blame from God even though God was the ultimate cause (same as primary cause).² Yet earlier, he admits that Satan was “God’s instrument.”³ He also says God is never the “efficient cause” of sin.⁴ This tangled web of causes creeps up frequently in Calvinists’ attempts to shield God from being the author of sin, suggesting that the problems I have highlighted trouble Calvinists as well.

Theologian Henry Meeter tries to clear up the confusion:

Consider the Calvinist’s view regarding the universe of created things! Not only does he believe that it was created by God; but all that occurs in it, whether in nature or in human life, he holds to be but the unfolding of a divine plan of the ages. Even sin does not happen as an accident. God willingly permitted sin, lets it work according to its own inherent nature, and controls it for his glory. God works upon this creation in either of two ways. He works through the normal operations of the universe. Men, even sinful men, and nature act freely according to their own impulses or laws. They are, however, only the secondary causes; behind them lies God, as the First Cause of all things. He, without compelling any secondary causes to act contrary to their own nature and choice, brings to pass all that happens in the universe. . . . The Calvinist does not rest content . . . until he has traced all events back to God and dedicated them to him.⁵

So, put in other words, God as the primary cause of everything that happens uses secondary causes to render certain what he wants to happen according to his foreordained plan. Even the fall of Adam is planned and rendered certain by God, but God is not responsible for the sin of Adam because secondary or proximate causes such as Satan and Adam’s choice to sin actually bring it about. What is this but an appeal to direct and indirect causation? Ultimately, as Meeter admits, all events including the fall of Adam must be traced back to God, who renders them certain.

How does this appeal to secondary causes get God off the hook for evil or rescue his reputation? Helm recognizes the problem and pushes further by appealing to different intentions in such events as Adam’s fall: “God ordains evil but does not intend evil as evil, as the human agent intends it. In God’s case there is some other description of the morally evil action which he intends the evil action to fill. There are other ends or purposes which God has in view.”⁶

So, God planned, foreordained, rendered certain, and controlled the fall, but God is not guilty and Adam is because of their different intentions as primary and secondary causes. But doesn’t God ultimately serve as the instigator of the evil intention of Adam? Where else could it come from? If we trace everything back to God, as Meeter insists we must, isn’t God still the initiator and instigator and ultimate cause of Adam’s evil will? Does merely saying that God intended the fall for good release him from responsibility in such a case? I don’t think so.

Is there any analogy to this Calvinist explanation of God’s innocent role in sin and evil in human experience? I think not. Remember the analogy I offered earlier of the father who manipulated his son to rob money. I cannot think of a single example in human experience where one person who renders it certain that another person will do something evil is considered innocent — even if he meant it for good. In my analogy the manipulative father intended to use the money his son stole to help the poor, which would not lessen his legal liability for the robbery. As Evans (quoted earlier) wrote: “Ultimate responsibility . . . resides where the ultimate cause is.”⁷

It seems that the appeal to the distinction between primary and secondary causes fails to help the Calvinist solve the problem of God and evil. God is still the ultimate cause of evil and in more than the ordinary sense of being the creator and sustainer of the universe and the powerful one who must concur with the action of the doer of evil.

Another strategy employed by some Calvinists to rescue God’s reputation in spite of divine determinism of sin and evil is appeal to what is known as “Molinism” or “middle knowledge.” Calvinist theologian Bruce Ware uses this method to explain how God foreordains and renders certain even the evil actions of people such as Adam in his rebellion and yet is not the guilty party and bears none of the blame.⁸ Molinism (named after sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina [1535 – 1600]) is the belief that God possesses “middle knowledge” — knowledge of what any creature would do freely in any possible set of circumstances. The creature may possess libertarian freedom — freedom not compatible with determinism and able to do otherwise than it does — but God knows what he or she would do with that ability in any conceivable (i.e., logically possible) situation. A Calvinist Molinist such as Ware must alter the traditional Molinist idea of middle knowledge because he does not believe in libertarian freedom — the power of contrary choice. So Ware attempts to construct a version of Molinism that attaches not libertarian freedom but compatibilist freedom to middle knowledge.

Ware employs this idea of middle knowledge to explain God’s blameless sovereignty over evil. According to Ware, God has the ability

to envision, by middle knowledge, an array of situations in which his moral creatures (angelic and human) would choose and act as they would. More specifically, God [is] capable of knowing just what a moral agent would do in one situation, with its particular complex factors, as opposed to what that agent would do in a slightly different situation, with a slightly different complex of factors.⁹

In order to assure that the sin God wants to happen does happen without him being its direct cause or responsible for it (in a guilty sense), God simply places the creature (e.g., Adam) in a situation where he knows the creature will develop a controlling motive of his own accord and act sinfully out of it. Ware calls this an “indirect-passive divine agency,” which controls human sinful choices without causing them. Ware explains further:

When God envisions various sets of factors within which an agent will develop a strongest inclination to do one thing or another, the strongest inclination that emerges from those factors is not caused by the factors, nor is it caused by God. Rather, in light of the nature of the person, when certain factors are present, his nature will respond to those factors and seek to do what he, by nature, wants most to do. In short, the cause of the strongest inclination and the resultant choice is the nature of the person in response to factors presented to him.¹⁰

Ware thinks this gets God off the hook for evil while at the same time accounting for God’s absolute sovereignty even over evil. He suggests that on this account, we should think of God “occasioning” a person’s sinful decisions and actions while not “causing” them.

Because God knows the nature of each person perfectly, he knows how those natures will respond to particular sets of factors presented to them. Thus, without causing a person to do evil, he nonetheless controls the evil they do. He controls whether evil is done, what evil is done, and in any and every case he could prevent the evil from being done. But in no case does he cause the evil to be done. In this way, God maintains meticulous control over evil while his moral creatures alone are the agents who do the evil, and they alone bear moral responsibility for the evil they freely do.¹¹

Several questions arise from Ware’s (and other Calvinists’) account of God’s involvement in sin and evil. First, given the strong view of God’s sovereignty, how is it possible for a creature to have a nature that will then automatically develop an evil controlling inclination independent of God’s ultimate causality? Where does such a nature come from? What is the source of the evil in it that causes it to develop a sinful strongest inclination or motive and then act upon it? Doesn’t this account of human nature introduce an element of creaturely autonomy not allowed in traditional Calvinism?

To be specific, what flaw in Adam’s nature made it inevitable that if he were placed in certain circumstances (namely, the garden of Eden with the serpent, etc.), he would sin? And where did that flaw come from if not from God? Ware’s explanation seems to introduce into human existence a flawed nature given by God or a degree of autonomy from God not consistent with Ware’s own high Calvinist view of sovereignty.

Second, and perhaps more obvious, how does this account of God’s sovereignty over evil really get God off the hook, so to speak? After all, God is still the one manipulating the decisions and actions that occur. For example, according to Ware, God knew Adam so well that he knew he would develop an evil controlling motive and then sin if placed in the garden with the serpent and the tree. In what human experience would such a manipulative, controlling person not be at least equally guilty with the person who sinned (or committed a crime)? Ware offers a couple of illustrations of such experience, but they fail at crucial points. For example, he asks his readers to imagine a police sting operation in which the police know for sure that a certain criminal will break the law if drawn into a certain situation.

Such a scenario is not difficult to imagine; any viewer of the television show Dateline has seen it many times in the show’s series To Catch a Predator. There vice officers (or persons being guided by them) use computer chat rooms to lure sexual predators to a house to have sex with a minor. When the predators show up, the police are there to greet and handcuff them. The police, of course, are innocent even though they have manipulated the predator into attempting to commit a crime. Ware offers such an example (without being that specific). But does it work? Is this really an analogy to God’s use of middle knowledge to control evil in his view of God’s sovereignty?

I submit it doesn’t work. Here’s why. First, the police who lure the predators had nothing to do with their becoming sexual perverts. They are not the persons’ creators and they are not the sovereign rulers of the predators’ universe. Here there is genuine autonomy; the predators are in no way dependent on the police for their existence or their natures. Ware seems to forget for the moment that, according to Calvinism, to which he fully subscribes, God is the creator of everything, including every nature. Calvinism radically rejects creaturely autonomy. He seems to think it compatible with Calvinism to say that a certain nature inclined toward evil can exist without God being its source. (Only libertarian free will can really explain how a good nature turns bad without God being responsible for that. But Ware’s Calvinism rejects libertarian free will.)

Second, and closely related to the first objection, for the analogy to work, you would have to imagine the police not only luring an unknown person met online to a house. You would have to imagine the police also setting up the person to go online seeking a minor with whom to have sex. And you would have to keep going backward to keep the analogy between God and the police working. The police would have to somehow manipulate the potential predator to have abnormal thoughts, feelings, and desires. After all, Ware doesn’t believe that God simply “finds” a person such as Adam and then uses his already independently existing twisted nature that will inevitably emerge as a rebellious inclination. God is Adam’s Creator; everything about Adam is God’s creation. To say otherwise is to introduce an element of creaturely autonomy ruled out by Calvinism’s strong account of God’s sovereignty.

Third, in a police sting such as To Catch a Predator, the police never actually allow the predator to harm someone. They only allow them to go so far in that direction. If the police, or the television show’s agents under the watchful eye of the police, ever actually allowed the person to harm a minor, they would be liable for criminal charge...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• One. Introduction: Why This Book Now?
• Two. Whose Calvinism? Which Reformed Theology?
• Three. Mere Calvinism: The TULIP System
• Four. Yes to God’s Sovereignty; No to Divine Determinism
• Five. Yes to Election; No to Double Predestination
• Six. Yes to Atonement; No to Limited Atonement/Particular Redemption
• Seven. Yes to Grace; No to Irresistible Grace/Monergism
• Eight. Conclusion: Calvinism’s Conundrums
• Appendix 1: Calvinist Attempts to Rescue God’s Reputation
• Appendix 2: Responses to Calvinist Claims
• Notes