Determined to Believe?

John C. Lennox

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780310589815
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Free Will & Determinism in Philosophy

A serious biblical and philosophical investigation of theological determinism: the idea that everything that happens has already been decided by God, including who will and won't be saved.

This book was written for those who are interested in, or troubled by, questions about God's sovereignty and human freedom and responsibility. Christian apologist John Lennox writes in the spirit of helping people understand the biblical treatment of these concepts.

In this mind-bending review of the topics of theological determinism, predestination, election, and foreknowledge, Lennox:

• Defines the problem, considering the concept of freedom, the different kinds of determinism, and the moral issues these pose.
• Explores the range of theological opinion and unpacks what the Bible—especially the gospels and Paul's letter to the Romans—teaches about human and sovereign will.
• Addresses the question of Christian assurance: how can I know if I have salvation?

This nuanced and detailed study challenges some of the widely held assumptions about theological determinism and brings a fresh perspective to the debate.

This book is for anyone who's asked questions like:

• Is my decision to believe or disbelieve in Jesus actually my decision?
• Is it possible for a genuine believer to lose their salvation?
• How much free will do I really have?

By the author of Seven Days that Divide the World and 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, Determined to Believe? will launch your consciousness into a fresh understanding and appreciation of this important Christian debate and help you think both biblically and logically about the human condition.

PART 1

THE PROBLEM DEFINED

CHAPTER 1

The Nature and Limitations of Freedom

Most humans rank freedom among the highest of ideals. Freedom, we feel, is every human being’s birthright: none has the right to deprive us of it against our will (except, of course, in cases of proven criminality). Even to attempt to remove someone’s freedom is regarded as a crime against the essential dignity of what it means to be human.

Yet one of the key questions for any of us is: how free am I, if at all? There are people who think that human freedom is severely limited or even illusory. Some of them are atheists, and they ask: how can I be free, since the universe is completely responsible for my existence? Others are believers in God, and they may ask the very same question with a radically different starting point: how free am I, if at all, when God is completely responsible for my existence and behaviour?

Historically, the longing to be free has played a major role in the human drama. Robert Green Ingersoll wrote: “What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart – liberty is to the soul of man.” In his State of the Union Address in 1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt enunciated the famous Four Freedoms:

Freedom of speech

Freedom of worship

Freedom from want

Freedom from fear.

Such freedoms are almost universally regarded as central to what it means to be human. In the preamble to the UN Charter of Human Rights the four freedoms are described as the “highest aspiration of the common people”. Many who possess them to a certain degree tend to take them for granted. For many more these freedoms seem a distant, impossible dream – unrealisable yet tantalising.

If we are asked what we mean by “freedom” many of us will respond by saying that it means that we should be able to choose what we do; that we should be able to exercise our will, make our own decisions, and be able to implement them, provided we do not infringe other people’s space and curtail their freedom.

Now we all realise that our freedom, whatever it involves, has certain inbuilt limitations. We are not free to run at fifty kilometres per hour, we are not free to live without food or air, and so on. However, we sense that we are free, provided there is availability and we have the resources, to choose between peas and beans, a green shirt or a blue one. We are free to support one football team rather than another, to tell the truth or to lie, to be kind or to be awkward. In fact, trying to decide between the endless different offerings on the supermarket shelves sometimes makes us wish we did not have so much freedom of choice.

We are also well aware that on occasions we voluntarily limit some of our freedoms – sometimes even for pleasure. For instance, if I am a member of a football team I cannot simply play as I like, inventing the rules as I go along. The whole point of the game is that I limit myself to playing within the rules, subject to the leadership of the captain. That is what makes football a game.

There are also more important contexts in which we submit to limitations, for the sake of our own safety and security: different nations choose which side of the road their citizens should drive on. This is an arbitrary choice, but once made it would be foolish and dangerous to ignore it and simply drive as we choose. More generally, as citizens of a civilised state, we voluntarily submit to the laws of the land (in theory, at least), foregoing part of our freedom as individuals. We do this for the sake of the higher good of enjoying the benefits of living together in a peaceful and civilised society.

When it comes to the right of human beings to essential freedom, all of us – whatever worldview we hold – would agree that this right should be regarded as inviolable. Sadly, in some parts of the world there is still a sorry failure to achieve anything approaching the Four Freedoms. It therefore rightly rouses our indignation to see any human being enslaved – treated as nothing more than a cog in a machine, a mere means to the end of another person’s pleasure or profit. Every human being, man or woman, boy or girl, of whatever race, colour, or creed, from whatever part of the world, has a right to be treated as an end in himself or herself, never as a mere statistic, or simply as a means of production, but as a person with a name and a unique identity, born to be free.

But what is freedom? To what extent do we have it?

Two kinds of freedom

From the time of philosophers John Locke and David Hume distinctions have been made between two kinds of freedom – the liberty of spontaneity and the liberty of indifference.

The “liberty of spontaneity” is the freedom to follow our own motives, to do whatever we want to do, without anybody or anything else – say, the government – forcing us to do something we don’t want to do, or stopping us from doing what we want to do. Granted that we have the health, ability, money, and necessary circumstances, and are not subject to any external constraint or restraint, most people agree that we have this liberty of spontaneity.

The “liberty of indifference” (libertarian freedom¹) is the freedom to have done otherwise than in actual fact we chose to do on any occasion in the past. Faced with a choice between two courses of action in the future, liberty of indifference would imply that the choice is completely open. I can choose either course of action indifferently; and having chosen the one course of action, I can, on looking back, know that I could equally well have freely chosen the other course. I can choose, or could have chosen, to do X or not-X.

In this book when I use the term “free will” I shall understand it in this sense.

Suppose, for instance, Jim has reached the point where he must choose to marry either Rose or Rachel. He has the liberty of spontaneity: no one is going to force him to marry the one rather than the other. He thinks, however, that he also has the liberty of indifference. He feels that he could just as easily marry either one of them “indifferently”.

Augustine (theologian and philosopher from the fourth and fifth centuries), in common with Hume and many others, would deny that Jim has this kind of liberty. They hold that various complex subconscious physical and psychological processes constrain and determine his choice. Jim is free to marry the girl he chooses; however, the choice he will eventually make is already determined by these deep-seated processes inside him. He is not free to choose and act other than he does choose and act. The upshot of this is that some philosophers think that freedom of spontaneity is compatible with determinism – a view called compatibilism. Of course, libertarian freedom is the direct opposite of determinism. The Oxford Handbook of Free Will says:

… debates about free will in the modern era since the seventeenth century have been dominated by two questions, not one – the “Determinist Question”: “Is determinism true?” and the “Compatibility Question”: “Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinism?” Answers to these questions have given rise to two of the major divisions in contemporary free will debates, between determinists and indeterminists, on the one hand, and between compatibilists and incompatibilists, on the other.²

Freedom and morality

It is beyond dispute that our taste in food or art or music, or our choice of spouse, or indeed any of our decisions and choices, are heavily influenced by elements in our physical or psychological make-up. However, whatever inner psychological traumas, desires, or urges may dispose us to break the moral or even the civil law – and we all have these – most of us believe that, as normal human beings, we are still free to choose to control our urges and keep both the moral and the civil law. We are, therefore, morally responsible to do so. This is the only basis on which civilised society can function. Thus there is a close connection between (libertarian) freedom and responsibility.

Indeed, the very existence of civil and criminal law demonstrates that members of civilised societies have a deep-seated conviction that they possess not only the liberty of spontaneity but the liberty of indifference. An essential part of what it means to be mature human beings (so discounting here both infants and the severely mentally ill) is the freedom to choose between A and not-A, such that we are morally responsible and hence accountable for our actions. The Supreme Court of the United States of America says that a belief in determinism “is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system” (United States vs. Grayson, 1978).

To be a moral creature, one first of all needs moral awareness. Human beings, as far as we know, are the only creatures on earth that have such awareness. You can train a dog by rigorous, painful discipline not to steal a joint of beef from the table, but you will never succeed in teaching a dog why it is morally wrong to steal. It has no concept of morality and never will have.

Secondly, if one is going to behave morally, one must not only be aware of the difference between moral good and moral evil; one must have sufficient freedom of will in order freely to choose to do good or to do evil. In this respect there is a whole category difference between even the most advanced computer and a human being. A computer might give you the answers to moral questions which it is programmed to give you; but it would not itself understand, or be aware of, morality. It cannot, therefore, be held morally responsible for its choices and behaviour. If a computer is involved in the design of land-mines which ultimately cause the maiming or death of thousands of children, it makes no sense to accuse it of morally reprehensible behaviour. It had no free will or choice. It did what it was programmed to do. It is not a moral being and so is not responsible for its actions.

Human beings, by contrast, are not in that sense programmed (not unless they have been subjected to deep psychological conditioning). They have the ability to choose and, therefore, to make moral decisions. What is more, they generally pride themselves on it. No one would prefer to be a humanoid, computerised robot. When a man has chosen, for instance, to face danger for the sake of standing by his moral principles rather than take the cowardly way out and deny them, he likes to be regarded as having been responsible for his moral choice – and sometimes even to be praised for it. It is usually when we have done something very wrong that we are tempted to deny moral responsibility and to say, “I couldn’t help it.”

Cambridge neuroscientist Harvey McMahon writes:

Free-will also underpins ethics, where choices are made in the light of moral principles. In fact free-will underpins all choices. Furthermore, free-will underpins the role of intentionality and guilt in the judicial system… The very idea of rules or laws implies that we have a choice or ability to obey. How can the law command us to do certain things if we do not have the ability to do them? Thus, even the concept of obedience implies we have a choice.³

Indeed, most civilised people regard as reprehensible and dehumanising the tendency in totalitarian states to treat those who take a moral stand against the state as “deviant” or “ill” rather than possessing the moral capacity to choose.

C.S. Lewis addressed this danger of regarding wrongdoing as essentially pathological in a brilliant essay entitled “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”:

The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust… Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a “case”…

To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed wi...