Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

Alexander, Johnson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781532601026
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world. Or so most of the authors in this book claim. While Calvinism has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years amongst theologians and laypersons, many philosophers have yet to follow suit. The reason seems fairly clear: Calvinism, many think, cannot handle the problem of evil with the same kind of plausibility as other more popular views of the nature of God and the nature of God's relationship with His creation. This book seeks to challenge that untested assumption. With clarity and rigor, this collection of essays seeks to fill a significant hole in the literature on the problem of evil.

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Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

A Map of the Territory

—Daniel M. Johnson

The main source of the resistance of Christian academic philosophers to Calvinism is the problem of evil. Despite the many philosophical and theological advantages of Calvinism, and the lack of philosophical consensus in favor of libertarian accounts of the will, the mainstream of Christian philosophy has resisted Calvinism because of a general sense that Calvinism makes the problem of evil—far and away the most serious philosophical challenge to theism—harder to solve. At least some of the reason for this general sense is that Calvinistic treatments of the problem of evil are comparatively underdeveloped in the contemporary literature. However, there is a long history of reflection on evil in the Reformed tradition that remains largely untapped in the contemporary discussion.

My aim in this essay is to argue that there are enough resources in the Reformed tradition to mount quite a convincing reply to the argument that Calvinism is worse off with respect to the problem of evil than are other Christian traditions. In order to make that case, I will give a careful map of the various difficulties that evil might be thought to pose for Calvinism. There are a host of concepts and distinctions to be found in the Reformed tradition that are relevant for thinking about evil, but it is often not obvious how exactly they are relevant. My goal is to develop and explore each concept in a thorough way, and show how they coalesce into a convincing reply to the various problems posed by evil. The result will be a conceptual map of the territory covered by the relation of Calvinism to evil.

1. Setting the Stage: What is Calvinism?

There are at least two importantly distinct strands of thought that go under the heading of Calvinism, and each involves a number of subclaims. I’ll call the two Calvinist soteriology and Calvinist determinism.

Calvinist soteriology. The Calvinist picture of salvation goes basically like this: fallen man is unable to turn to God with saving faith, because fallen man is unwilling to turn to God (and is therefore responsible for his rebellion). Every believer is infallibly brought to faith, sustained in faith, and sanctified by the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit. Those who are brought to life are not chosen because of their worthiness, for they are as undeserving as any; what reason God has for choosing those he does remains a mystery.

The famous acronym TULIP captures this fairly well. Total Depravity (better: Total Inability) is the claim that fallen humans are fundamentally opposed to God and unable (because unwilling) to turn to God. Note that Calvinists will not deny that humans are able to avoid sin in whatever sense of “ability” is necessary for responsible action; they simply deny that this “ability” is metaphysically ultimate or absolute, so there is also an important sense in which humans are, ultimately speaking, unable to turn to God. Unconditional Election says that God chooses whom he will regenerate and save (his decree of election) independent of any good or bad thing they might have done, since they are as blameworthy as those he chooses not to regenerate and save (his decree of reprobation). Limited Atonement (better: Definite Atonement) says that Jesus died in order to actually save the elect and only the elect.14 Irresistible Grace (better: Efficacious Grace) says that the regenerating and saving power of the Spirit is not resistible by human beings precisely because it changes what those human beings want and will. Perseverance of the Saints says that, because the Spirit’s grace is irresistible, the Spirit’s power shepherds the elect infallibly all the way to glory.

Calvinist determinism: Calvinist soteriology is really just a series of claims about fallen humanity. Calvinists usually accompany this soteriology with a complementary picture of the entire course of history: God is in control of everything, and has from eternity ordained all that has come to pass and will come to pass. At the same time, human beings are genuine agents and are responsible for their actions.

The strands are distinct, but they are tied by this: each entails a denial of libertarian views of moral responsibility (with a qualification forthcoming in a moment). Calvinist soteriology claims that humans are responsible though unable (in the absolute metaphysical sense of “ability” that libertarians think essential to responsible action) to avoid sin; Calvinist determinism says humans are responsible even though how they act is decreed by God. Both strands are pastorally important. Realization of Calvinist soteriology is important for generating gratitude, humility, and freedom from anxiety; Calvinist determinism is important for generating proper reverence and also for freedom from fear and anxiety.

Though the two do go together, there may be important positions that accept the first strand and deny the second. For instance, you might think that Adam had the sort of absolute metaphysical power to act otherwise that was outside God’s control, but fallen humanity no longer has the ability to avoid sin (though it is still responsible for that sin). This would require an unusual position on the connection between free will and moral responsibility, but it is an example of a position which accepts the first strand and not the second.15 On some readings, Augustine may take this view. This may qualify as a Calvinist position, and it is the sort of position that many Calvinists would be friendly to. Calvinist soteriology is more important to many of them than Calvinist determinism, which is to say that they are more committed to their position about fallen humanity than to their position about Adam and Eve.

I said that each strand of Calvinism entails the denial of libertarian views of moral responsibility. It is important, though, to clarify exactly what consequences that accepting both strands of Calvinism has for accounts of free will. The Calvinist has two basic sorts of options. First, the Calvinist can accept that free will is a necessary condition of moral responsibility, and claim that free will is compatible with Calvinist determinism and Calvinist soteriology. Second, the Calvinist can deny that free will is a necessary condition on moral responsibility. The first is by far the more common today, but the second has important examples. I’ll treat each in turn. Calvinism is not compatible, in my opinion, with Derk Pereboom’s outright denial of moral responsibility, since I don’t see how the central theses of Christianity (and therefore Calvinism) that human beings are guilty before God, deserving of punishment, and forgiven because of Christ can be preserved on his view.16

First, Calvinist compatibilism about free will: Calvinists can accept many of the compatibilist theories of free will on offer in the literature today. Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, according to which an action is free just in case it is the result of the motives of the agent, is a classic statement of this sort of compatibilist theory of free will, and many Calvinists follow Edwards here. However, there is an importantly different sort of view of free will available to the Calvinist. The contemporary literature on free will categorizes views on free will in a fairly strange manner. The current literature defines compatibilism as the thesis that free will (along with moral responsibility) is compatible with determinism. So far, so good. But then much of the contemporary literature defines determinism as the thesis that the state of the world at any given instant, plus the laws of nature, entails the state of the world at any other instant. Notice that this is a sort of natural or this-worldly determinism, since it does not take into account the possibility of determination that flows only from a God whose decisions lie outside of time. Calvinists who think that free will is necessary for moral responsibility are not committed to the thesis that free will is compatible with this sort of determinism; they are only committed to the thesis that free will is compatible with divine determinism—the thesis that everything that happens is determined by God’s decree. The contemporary terminology has the curious consequence, then, that some Calvinist views actually count as libertarian views, since they claim that free will is incompatible with natural determinism but compatible with divine determinism.

Examples of Calvinist views which count as libertarian in the contemporary terminology are the views of Hugh McCann and Jack Crabtree (perhaps following Aquinas), according to which human free actions cannot be fully determined by this-worldly causation but only by God’s different, transcendent causation.17 According to McCann, what is different about God’s transcendent, creative causation is that it doesn’t operate as an external determining condition of the resultant creation. Instead, the creation (including creaturely actions) just is the content of God’s intention, which means that we in fact have our being in God and are not “acted upon” or “undergo or suffer anything”18 when we act, even though we act according to God’s decree. McCann (and Crabtree) therefore claim that the “ability to do otherwise” that is essential to human freedom is much stronger than the kind of ability admitted by Edwards-style compatibilists.19 However, they still deny that this ability is an absolute metaphysical ability that evades God’s control, and so their view entails Calvinist determinism and is compatible with Calvinist soteriology.20 It is hard to know how to classify this sort of view of free will. It counts as libertarian on the contemporary category system, and it certainly shares some of the traditional libertarian opposition to Edwards-style compatibilism. McCann, in fact, embraces the contemporary terminology and claims to be a libertarian.21 However, the view also asserts that free will is compatible with complete divine determination of human free actions, and so seems to warrant the label “compatibilism.” For the purposes of this essay, I will count the McCann/Crabtree view as a sort of compatibilism because it shares with compatibilism the characteristic I am interested in—compatibility with Calvinism.

Second, Calvinists have the option of denying free will so long as they deny that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. There are a couple of possible versions of this view. On one view, the Calvinist may claim that “free will” means the absolute metaphysical ability to do good and turn to God, in which case pre-Fall and glorified humanity has free will but post-Fall humanity does not, while Christians...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Calvinism and the Problem of Evil
• Chapter 2: Molinist Gunslingers
• Chapter 3: Theological Determinism and the “Authoring Sin” Objection
• Chapter 4: Not the Author of Evil
• Chapter 5: Orthodoxy, Theological Determinism, and the Problem of Evil
• Chapter 6:Discrimination
• Chapter 7: On Grace and Free Will
• Chapter 8: The First Sin
• Chapter 9: Calvinism and the First Sin
• Chapter 10: A Compatibicalvinist Demonstrative-Goods Defense
• Chapter 11: Calvinism and the Problem of Hell
• Chapter 12: Calvinism, Self-Attestation, and Apathy toward Arguments from Evil