It is no secret to most that I hold strongly to the Reformed doctrines of grace. But it is equally no secret that I have deep respect for the godly character and scholarship of many of the Arminian persuasion that believe differently than I. The issues that unite us a greater and more substantial than those that divide us. In other words, the Calvinism/Arminianism divide is over non-essential issues in my opinion. What I am saying is that this article is in no way meant for to put an essential line of demarcation concerning the issues of Calvinism and Arminianism. However, just because something is not essential does not mean it is not important. Therefore, I continue to write on these about such.
Yesterday, I wrote that I believe that the doctrine of Prevenient grace is the Achilles heel of Arminianism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy (although, less so with Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism since they don’t have such a strong stance on depravity). Prevenient grace literally means “grace that comes before.” Prevenient grace is the Arminian counter to the Calvinistic doctrine of Irresistible grace.
It is important to note at the outset that both Calvinists and Arminians believe that people are born sinful. To make this a little more clear, both sides agree that all people are born with an inherent disposition of antagonism toward God. Both Calvinists and Arminians reject what is know as Pelagianism. Pelagius, a fifth-century British monk, taught that people are born neutral, neither good nor bad. Pelagius believed that people sin as a result of example, not nature. Augustine, the primary opponent of Pelagius, responded by teaching that people are not born neutral, but with a corrupted nature. People sin because it is in their nature to sin; they are predisposed to sin. Both Calvinists and Arminians agree with Augustine believing the Scriptures to teach that people are born with a totally (radically) corrupt spiritual nature, making their disposition toward God perpetually antagonistic. Therefore, according to both sides, people are absolutely helpless without God’s gracious, undeserved intervention. This is an important mischaracterization of Arminian theology that adherents to my position often fail to realize. Arminians believe in the doctrine of total depravity just as strongly as Calvinists. In contrast, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics both hold out some sense of natural ability. Therefore, they don’t believe that the will is as depraved as traditional Protestants.
This adherence to total depravity makes the Arminian doctrine of Prevenient grace necessary. A former Wesleyan theology professor of mine who believed in Prevenient grace once called it the “ingenious doctrine.” Why? Because according to Arminians it allows them to hold to the biblical position of total depravity, yet also allow true free will. You see, according to Calvinists such as myself, if people are in such desperate condition, being inclined toward enmity with God from birth, and unable to change their condition on their own (as a leopard cannot change its spots – Jer. 13:23), having no “free will” to choose against this depraved nature, then the only way to answer the question, How is anyone saved? is to answer that the will of God saves them. In other words, if our will could not change our disposition, then God must have changed our will. Up to this point, both Calvinists and Arminians agree. But the Calvinist will say that God’s intervention is radical. In our depraved state, God comes into our lives and opens our eyes to His beauty. This intervention happens by means of saving or “irresistible” grace. In our helpless and antagonistic position, while shaking our fists at God, God sovereignly and autonomously regenerates us. Once regenerated, we trust and love the Lord because our nature has been transformed by Him. Therefore, God is the only one to credit for our salvation seeing as how we did not play any part in its genesis (this is sometimes referred to as monergism). But, according to Calvinists, God does not give this gift of saving grace to all people, only the elect. Otherwise, all would be saved.
How do Arminians deal with our depraved condition? Well, they reject the Calvinistic doctrine of “irresistible” grace believing that it does violence to the necessary freedom that must exist for God to have a true loving relationship with man. But something, nevertheless, must make belief possible. In comes Prevenient grace. This is an enabling grace that comes to the aid of all people so that their disposition can be made capable of receiving the Gospel. It does not save them as the Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace, but it makes the savable. In essence, Prevenient grace restores people to a state of ability. As Adam before the fall was not predisposed toward a willful rejection of God, being able to make a true free will decision, so people, once affected by Prevenient grace are brought dispositionally to Garden of Eden type conditions. God’s grace comes to the aid of all fallen sinners restoring freedom of the will. Now, it is up to the individual to make an unbiased untainted choice for or against God. Voila! With the doctrine of Prevenient grace, total depravity and true freedom can be harmonized. Ingenious, right?
I agree with Calvinist commentator and theologian Tom Schreiner that “Prevenient grace is attractive because it solves so many problems [for the Arminian] . . .” but I also believe that it creates more problems than it solves. I am going to briefly list the two major problems that I see with the doctrine of Prevenient grace, but I, as always, want to remind you that there are many great men in the history of the church and in contemporary Evangelical philosophy and theology that do not see things the way I do. I encourage you to seek out their position from them in addition to reading my analysis.
1. Lack of Scripture: The biggest issue that Calvinists have traditionally had with the doctrine of Prevenient grace is its lack of biblical support. Tom Schreiner’s quote above is incomplete; it concludes with this, “. . . but it should be rejected because it cannot be exegetically vindicated.” While Prevenient grace may solve problems and allow Arminians to hold to a biblical understanding of depravity, the biblical support for the doctrine is very difficult to find. Most Arminians would agree that direct and explicit support from Scripture is not there, but they would say that the concept is necessitated from other explicit teachings. Most importantly, God commands and desires that all people are to repent of their sin (Acts 17:30, 2 Pet. 3:9, et al) and holds them responsible if they do not. This assumes that “all people” have this ability, otherwise God’s desire is hopeless and His command is useless. While there may be some mystery in the fact that God desires the salvation of all and commands all to repent, this does not necessitate nor justify, in my opinion, the insertion of a fairy complected and even more mysterious doctrine of Prevenient grace. In other words, it could be conceded that God commands all people to repent because sin is at issue. People have violated God’s law. This necessitates God to act as God in accordance with His righteous character and reveal the violation of sin, even to those who have no ability to change on their own. In this case, God’s command is true and genuine. Even if no one were to respond, their sin is made manifest and God’s righteousness is exposed through God’s command. It can also be conceded that God does truly desire the repentance of all people, even if people do not have the ability to repent. God’s desire in this case is mysteriously not going to be an active agent in bringing about the salvation of some. Why? I don’t know. But my ignorance in this matter does not justify the implication of Prevenient grace. God can passively desire things that He does not actively will to come about.
2. It does not really solve any problems: Lets assume that we could overcome the difficulties of the lack of Scriptural support of Prevenient grace. Let’s say that I give the Arminians the benefit of the doubt and say that it is possible to interpret the biblical data in such a way that all people receive an enablement that neutralizes their antagonistic disposition toward God. God then would come to each person sometime in their lives and graciously restore their will to the point that they don’t have any predisposed inclination toward rejection or acceptance of the Gospel. What would this look like?
First, this “balancing the scales” of the will makes any choice, good or bad, for God or against, impossible. Why? Because each person would be suspended in a state of perpetual indecisiveness. They would have no reason for choosing A rather than B. Even Arminian theologian Roger Olson admitted to this in a recent post: “One thing I wrestle with about Arminianism is the mystery of free will. I don’t know how it works. There does seem to be an element of uncaused effect in it” (source). If there is no reason to choose one over the other, then all choices, if they were made, would be completely arbitrary (“uncaused effect”).
You see, we make choices according to who we are. If “free will” of the Arminian variety is going to be responsible for making the choice, and this will is neutralized by Prevenient grace, then there is nothing compelling you (character, upbringing, disposition, the Holy Spirit, genetics, etc.) to make any decision whatsoever. Who you are, the primary factor behind every choice, is taken away. There is no “you” to make the choice. It is arbitrary. It does not solve the “loving relationship”problem to say that God is pleased to have a relationship based upon the arbitrary decisions of people. Therefore, in order to hold to the doctrine of Prevenient grace, one is left with either perpetual indecisiveness or an arbitrary choice. Neither of which solves any problems.
Not only this, but lets do the math. Prevenient grace neutralizes the will, making the will completely unbiased toward good or evil. Therefore, this restored “free will” has a fifty-fifty shot of making the right choice. Right? This must be. The scales are completely balanced once God’s Prevenient grace has come upon a person. What would you expect to see if this were the case? Well, I can flip a coin and pretty much expect that the coin would land on heads just as many times as tails. The same should be the case with salvation. You should expect that just as many people to trust the Lord as those that don’t. But just a cursory look through Scripture tells us that this is not the case. For the most part the number of unbelievers has been dramatically higher than that of believers. Take the time of the flood for instance. How is it that out of millions of people (probably much more), there was only one who was found to be righteous? That would be like me flipping a coin a million (or more) times and it landing on tails 999,999 times and only landing on heads once. Impossible. Christ even explicitly said that there will be and always have been many more people who don’t believe than those that do (Matt. 7:14). How can this be if Prevenient grace created a situation of equal opportunity for all people? It can’t.
Now I don’t want to be accused of building a straw man here so I will attempt to represent how Arminians would respond to this. They would say that the contributing factors that influence people’s freedom are those in the outside world. As the snake came from the outside and influenced Adam’s otherwise neutral will, so also outside influences such as culture and family influence people’s will. Therefore, in the time of Noah, the reason why there was only one righteous person on the earth is because the culture had become so corrupt that God could not be found. This is why God destroyed everyone with the flood. This makes some sense, but in reality it simply re-introduces the same problem that Arminians are desperately attempting to avoid – divine unconditional election.
Let me explain. If outside influences play such a large role in influencing Prevenient-grace-restored-people in their choice for or against God, doesn’t that make God the determining factor in whether they are saved or not? If you had a choice, knowing that outside influences were going to play such a big role in the decisions you make, would you want to be born to a family of believers who teach and live the Gospel in a culture of believers that do the same, or would you rather be placed in a committed Muslim home in a Muslim country where the Gospel is unable to give a testimony of God? In other words, would you rather be placed in a Garden with the snake or without the snake? Of course you would say you want to be placed in the environment where the outside influences for belief in God would be most prominently exemplified. Why? Because you have a better chance. Maybe the odds are not perfect, but they would still be much better. Let’s face it, if you were in the preflood world at the time of Noah, as nice a person as you are today, I seriously doubt that you would have followed Noah rather than the rest of the world.
The problem is that you do not decide where you live or when you will be born. You do not determine your outside influences, God does.
Acts 17:26 26 And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.
This passage tells us that God determines the outside influences that are the ultimate influence, the determining factor, in our choice. God chose where you would be born, when, and to what family you would belong. Therefore, God’s sovereign unconditional choice is still the ultimate and determining cause in our salvation. This is the very problem that Arminians seek to avoid with the doctrine of Prevenient grace.
If Arminians were to respond by saying that God gives more grace to those in the most depraved conditions, this would not explain why it is that people in cultures and families that are godly have a higher percentage of believers. We are back to flipping the coin. It does not work either way.
In conclusion, I don’t believe that there is a reason for to entertain the doctrine of Prevenient grace outside of a presupposed view of what some believe must be in order for the truth to be palatable. More importantly, since it really does not solve any problems, it is, in my opinion, superfluous and confusing. Even if it may seem more palatable to say that all people have equal opportunity to accept the Gospel, the palatability of a doctrine does not determine its veracity. This is why I reject the doctrine of Prevenient Grace.
Whether you agree with me or not, I hope that I have been able to give you an appreciation of why Calvinists such as myself have issues with the libertarian freedom inducted by Prevenient grace.
360 replies to "Why I Reject the Arminian Doctrine of Prevenient Grace"
Yes, indeed; but that doesn’t answer my question at all. “Why,” (I said) “shouldn’t moral praise and blame be according to one’s nature? After all, we praise God for being good; isn’t that true praise, and praise of a moral quality?”
The moral praiseworthiness of Data’s actions was an question that Star Trek examined many times (although I didn’t watch it enough, so I don’t know if they decided to resolve the issue). I think they decided that although every step in Data’s processes was simple law-following based on his design, his actions were nonetheless creditable to him. I imagine that when his designer walked onstage, the characters complimented him on his design, and gave examples of times Data had shown courage that saved their lives (and such). They no doubt praised the designer for his life-saving design, but didn’t give the designer credit for the times Data had actually acted to save their lives (that credit belonged to Data himself).
We can also compare more reachable examples. We can actually observe people discussing literary characters like Samwise Gamgee or Ophelia, for both of which their respective authors managed to establish solid characters; we inevitably assign moral praise and blame to them and their actions (of course, not confusing them with real people who can act in our lives).
I didn’t say God was evil; I said that we praise God for being good, even though that is His nature and He cannot be otherwise. This contradicts your claim that praise must be for things which could have been otherwise.
-Wm
Wm,
It seems to me that there is a difference in praise going to someone that can not be otherwise and a being that can not be otherwise being held eternally accountable for the evil he did which he could not do otherwise. The evil he did because the Being that is now holding him eternally accountable saw to it that he had to do. And now, indeed, that Being that saw to it that he could not do otherwise is holding that one so accountable for what he could not help but do by His own decree that he is going to be eternally tormented with horrific torment for it!
WM,
I think the different between praising God for having a good nature and praising man for his nature is that God, including his nature, is a neccessary, uncreated being who, if He is to be truly God, must be good. A evil God is not God. Man on the other hand is a contingent, created being. If man’s nature is bound by God such that man cannot legitimately choose between good and evil then man’s nature is neither blameworthy or praiseworthy, rather God is praiseworth or blameworthy for creating a creature that is such.
Imagine my Star Trek scenario again with Data (yes I know I am a bit of a Trekkie). In the Star Trek series Data was the second android created by Dr. Soong. The first android was named Lore and was built without an ethics program. This android became a monster and was responsible for the deaths of thousands. This of course was no Soong’s intent. Now imagine instead that Dr. Soong had created Lore with the intention of creating a monster and had given it a anti-ethics program of sorts. Would Dr. Soong be blameworthy for the actions of Lore??
Ken,
I think you are expecting something of the Bible that it was never intended to be, namely a creed or a catechism of some type. I don’t think the Bible is inconsistent on this matter, but rather it is us humans who are not certain about the proper balance between God’s Sovereignty and God’s character, God’s will and human will, etc. Now I guess you could claim that you wish the Bible were more clear on the issue. That’s great – so do I!! However, I think to make this an excuse to not believe is placing a constraint upon how God chooses to communicate and basically saying, “if God doesn’t behave the way I expect Him to I won’t believe”. If God wished to speak to us through stories filled with all sorts of errors that would be His prerogative as would it if He chose not to reveal Himself in a specific manner at all.
Coffee Collection for October 19th…
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[…] It’s not so much having discussions about differences, but it is really aggravating when someone just says a position in one of these two camps is unbiblical. […]
I think the arguement that even with God’s grace man cannot go against the greatest desire of his will is erroneous. A simple example is when someone who is obese desires to lose weight. The strongest desire may have been to eat lots of good tasting food, but one day new information or revelation enters the picture and their desire changes. Now their greatest desire is to lose weight. I think this is a valid view of the choice God gives us. We do not desire to accept his offer of salvation, but he gives us new revelation (new to us) and now our greatest desire is for that new thing. There are many examples in scripture where men were exposed to the gospel, but chose to reject it. Yet others chose to accept it.
JohnB
That new information or revelation is traditionally called Prevenient Grace
Or I got that doctrine completely wrong…. which is always possible.
But it’s how interpret what Arminius said:
In this manner, I ascribe to grace the commencement, the continuance and the consummation of all good, and to such an extent do I carry its influence, that a man, though already regenerate, can neither conceive, will, nor do any good at all, nor resist any evil temptation, without this preventing and exciting, this following and co-operating grace.
(A Declaration Of The Sentiments Of Arminius On The Grace of God; The Works of James Arminius, Vol. 1 pp 144, CCEL)
Mick
[…] just as Dr Olson continued to explain his further challenges with Calvinism, Michael explained his challenges with […]
I deny wholeheartedly that God has libertarian freedom. Freedom to the contrary? Impossible. Why? First of all freedom to the contrary does not refer to multiple options from without. A thousand options is a red herring. Second, when libertarians speak of “freedom to the contrary,” they mean that at the moment of choice the subject could have chosen otherwise. This is absurd. Every choice is ultimately based on the strongest inclination at the moment of choice. THAT is the sufficient cause of every choice and it cannot be otherwise, irrespective of the multiple of choices on the outside available. If one says, “He could have chosen otherwise,” what he really means is, “He could have chosen against the strongest inclination at the moment of choice.” And what would that be but a stronger inclination, namely, the strongest inclination at the moment of choice. To say otherwise is to assert that a subject may act contrary to that strongest inclination at the moment of choice which is where libertarians come up with the phrases, “contra-causal” and “freedom-to-the-contrary.” The latter is contra the sufficient cause and as such has an entirely different cause or none at all. Pure nonsense. As someone has rightly said, libertarianism is psychological fiction, logical nonsense, and theological heresy. Or as Edwards said, either libertarianism or God. Either the rules of logic (which come from God) apply to reality, or not. All effects have causes (all choices have causes), all choices of agents have causes, and to deny this is to deny the law of non-contradiction. God works all things according to his will (Eph 1:11). No arbitrary insufficient cause here.
I agree with Don. The problem I’ve always had with libertarian freedom – apart from the fact that it is incomprehensible – is that it holds that each volition is spontaneously generated apart from any inclination as a cause because that would destroy what they call a free volition. In the common sense view of freedom, a virtuous act for instance, must come from a disposition to virtue. But on the libertarian presupposition of freedom a virtuous act comes from nothing. I don’t see how on the libertarian view anyone could be held responsible for anything. The view that a man could have willed otherwise in any given situation is answered with the simple retort – yes, a person could have willed otherwise in any given situation if he had willed otherwise i.e., if he were so inclined/disposed to do so. This is a “power of contrary” that we can believe in without falling into nonsense. The problem with the libertarian “power of contrary” is that a person who chose option A over option B could have chosen B without any change in the man’s internal state. His internal state is exactly the same but there are two different choices! This separates the act from the man and makes the choice completely arbitrary. The internal state of the man was causally irrelevant to the choice made. The choice simply arose spontaneously from nothing without a cause. I do not understand how such a choice could be made nor can I cannot conceive of such a view of freedom any more than I can conceive of a causeless cause or a square circle.
CMP,
You write that Catholics hold out some part for a natural ability, presumably apart from grace to move themselves to faith. This is incorrect as that idea was condemned both at the Synod of Orange in 529 and at the Council of Trent. It is also roundly rejected by major Catholic theologians from Anselm to Scotus and nearly everyone in between.
As for balancing the scales, this assumes a on your reading a Pelagian view of human nature to make the argument go through. You gloss Pelagianism as positing human nature as neutral. If preventing grace had a restorative influence it would only follow that it put people back to neutral if moral neutrality were their natural state and that could only go through if Pelagianism as you gloss it were true. So you here you beg the question. But Wesley and other Arminians roundly rejected a Pelagian view of nature.
Second, pelagianism didn’t take human nature as neutral prior to the fall, but intrinsically righteous or what Julian denoted as “natural grace” or “naturally graced.” This is essentially the Reformed and Lutheran view, which they inherited from the Neo-Semi-Pelagian Ockhamists. It is not Augustinian since Augustine held over against the Pelagians that grace was added at creation to nature. This is why the Reformed deny the notion of the supper added gifts and why they posit the Covenant of Works.
CMP,
Metaphysically, if human nature is per se good, then the restorative work of prevenient grace wouldn’t put one in a neutral position, but one that inclines to the Good. Furthermore, most defenders of LFW such as Robert Kane deny the kind of Buridan’s Ass case that you construct here since they deny given causal indeterminism that there are 50/50 cases where each option is equally probable. It is only by begging the question by assuming a deterministic theory of causation that the objection could go through.
As for what Roger Olsen says, Olsen is not a specialist in the metaphysics of free will so what he has to say outside his area of expertise is of limited argumentative value. Second, if you endorse a deterministic theory of causation, then you will need to explain what deterministically caused God to do what he did. It will do no good to speak of “self caused” actions and this is the point. Theological Soft determinism can make no sense out of free divine acts and falls prey to their own objections.
Further, Libertarians don’t deny antecedent causal states that contribute to causing an agents free act. What they deny are two claims. First that the antecedent states are sufficient causes and second that the causation is a deterministic causation. The fundamental problem is that the whole program treats persons as objects and objective explanations are of limited value and simply run out of juice when explaining persons since persons are more than objects. This is why they fall afowl of event causal explanations.
As Bryan Cross already noted, choosing consistent with our nature or character doesn’t imply a deterministic relation between choice and a specific option. My nature may limit my choices, but that is not the same as my nature determinsically causing and signaling out one outcome. Logically, you can’t get from the former to the latter.
And even if it were possible, your remarks confuse choosing voluntarily with choosing freely. All free choices are voluntary but not all voluntary choices are free. So even if you could prove that we are deterministically caused to will or select such and so object, it wouldn’t follow that the willing was free.
Further you write that on the Arminian and presumably Libertarian view “then there is nothing compelling you to make any decision whatsoever.” But even on Calvinist principles this is wrong, since Calvinists deny that sufficient antecedent causal states move by compulsion. Hence you are arguing for a non-Calvinist view of soft determinism.
As for arbitrary choices, if God’s actions are uncaused by any antecedent state of affairs then it follows on your reasoning that God’s actions are inexplicable and “arbitrary.”
CMP,
With respect to the fall of Adam and the external influence of the serpent, this doesn’t really have any explanatory value for your model. Adam was created on your view intrinsically righteous and was determined to act according to his nature and could not have willed contrary to it. An external influence wouldn’t change that, it would be like using a BB gun to take out a tank. Second, it simply moves the problem since there was no external sinful influence on Satan prior to his fall. Was his nature good or evil? Did it determine his actions or not?
Metaphysically to the point, if natures determine actions, then the notion of a person is entirely unnecessary. As Nietzsche noted, it is “a fiction added to the deed.” Then we are thrown back on to the old Hellenistic view that persons are simply instances of natures or kinds, individuated by matter. Such a view has serious implications for Trinitarianism, namely a denial of it via Modalism or Tri-Theism.
It may be so that creation is consistent with God’s character, but so is not creating anything at all or creating a world different than this one. God doesn’t gain anything with respect to being God or his glory by creating or not creating. What you are arguing for is that God’s nature determines his act of creation. (This was Edward’s conclusion btw.) But such is a denial of creation ex nihilo since God’s act is determined and necessary as his existence, making the world eternal with God. And so we are right back to Origenism.
You write that there must be an inner compulsion, but Calvinists deny that God’s providence amounts to compulsion. Further, you write that man has to be given a new character, but this assumes a pre-lapsarian Pelagian anthropology where grace is natural. To assert as much is to beg the question and that in favor of Pelagius.
You write that you do not see that common grace has a restorative effect on humanity at large, but I’d argue that this is due to a lack of looking at what the Bible says about Christ’s assumption of creation in his incarnation, namely Eph 1:10ff for starters. All things are summed up and recapitulated in Christ and so Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection has cosmic effects regardless of how agents dispose themselves towards God. And again, much depends on the notion of depravity with entails that the imago dei per se was lost, an entirely unAugustinian thesis.
Nothing forcing us to make a choice doesn’t imply that the choice was free. Plenty of forms of compulsion or determination are compatible with voluntary action, but that doesn’t imply that the voluntary acts are free acts.
CMP,
God doesn’t have freedom to sin or lie or such but that doesn’t imply that God doesn’t have libertarian free will. Libertarianism is not wedded to the idea that willing otherwise is the same as willing contrary to. Having a plurality of options is that is required for LFW in terms of the Alternative Possibilities condition. Just so long as God has a plurality of good objects of choice available to him, he can be impeccable and have LFW. The only way to attack that thesis is to deny that God has a plurality of good objects to choose between.
Consequently, the plurality of goods that are consistent with his character are also consistent with the conditions on LFW.
Do you believe that Adam could have chosen to overthrow God’s will for human nature to be righteous and thereby change human nature or no?
Edwards’ gloss that we only choose according to the strongest desire is wrong for a few reasons. First, it would imply that God’s actions are determined as well. Second, desires aren’t causes, but states and states cause nothing at all. Further, if desires did all the causal work, then intentions and decisions are danglers with no explanatory power. That is, decisions do not exist, only the motion of desires. Such an account is obviously inadequate. And there seem to be clear cases in say addiction when addicts do win out against their strongest desire and they do so for reasons and decisions that are made for those and include those reasons and not because of any countervailing desire.
Bryan Cross,
If freedom does require the ability to do otherwise, then the saints heaven per Aquinas are not free. This is why Aquinas denies explicitly that the AP condition is necessary for freedom. It only obtains on earth or in via but not in heaven since there is only one good to choose. While I agree with your position, I do not think it is consistent with Augustinianism.
Here is another reason it is not. What uncreated goods are there that are not the divine essence on your view that God chooses between? If none, then God is not free. Given that Augustine, not to mention Thomas deny that there is anything that is God that is not the divine essence and the divine essence admits of no real or formal distinctions, there is only one good object of choice and not many.
Wm. Tanksly,
The fixity of character doesn’t exclude LFW, it only implies a limitation on the scope of freedom. A change in the possible range of objects of choice isn’t the same as limiting the objects of choice to one. The only way that would be true is if goodness were absolutely one simple thing.
Such agents who achive a fixed state one way or another are still praiseworthy or blameworthy because they produced that state, just as a person who throws themselves down a hole from which they cannot escape is responsible for their state, even though they can’t change it.
Donald Hartley,
You create a straw man to attack as LFW doesn’t entail the ability to will contrary to, but only the ability to will otherwise. An impeccable agent could choose between two goods and to will one but not the other, and it would be to will otherwise, but not to will contrary to, since good is not opposed to good. This is why God’s choice between creating or not creating (saving or not) is not a choice between a good and an evil option.
The strongest inclination line won’t work, because inclinations aren’t causes and you need a cause, not a disposition directed towards an end, which is what inclinations are. Second, even if they were causes, you’d need to show that they were deterministic causes. Not just any causal theory will do. Third, it is rather tautological. Any decision could be explained by just saying it was the strongest. Its like survival of the fittest. Fourth, if inclinations did all the causal work, we wouldn’t need to speak of intentions, let alone descions. Consequently, the Edwardian model is inadequate.
If all effects have causes, and all choices of agents have causes and God is an agent, what is the cause of God’s actions? Was God determined to create and so do you deny creation ex nihilo too? What is the difference at this point between your conception of God and that of Aristotle or Plotinus which eternally generates the world?
No, that’s not a valid argument. It requires that we believe that God could have given up the excellencies of His nature if only He were willing to not be God anymore. God is God by nature.
Man’s nature is fixed because fixation is what a nature IS. It’s not something that changes. And man CAN choose between good and evil; but we know from the Bible that man consistently chooses evil, to the extent that even his righteous deeds are “as filthy rags”.
An old protest, so old that Paul thought of it as a direct response to his argument. We’ve covered this already, though.
Yes, he would have. This is a good illustration of not being what Calvinists are proposing. What do you think of my Data-based illustration?
-Wm
That’s true, but whenever the Bible explains WHY people chose, it tells us that it’s because they weren’t God’s people. It doesn’t say that it’s all just their free choice and nothing God could do about it.
-Wm
That’s not even close to what Calvinists say. That’s like saying there’s a class of people who are drawn by God, come to Jesus, but who are not raised up on the last day — and this is what Arminians say, not what Calvinists say. Calvinists say that everyone who comes to Christ will be raised up on the last day, which is akin to how everyone who looked on the serpent was healed from poison.
The Bible doesn’t say whether some people refused to look on the serpent, while it does say that some people refuse to come to Christ. So there the comparison has to stop.
-Wm
William,
I don’t follow your last comment at all. My point was that ALL of the Isralites could look on the serpent and be healed. In Calvinism, there are certain people–the reprobates that God passes over or even ordains before creation to be lost–that have no chance of receiving His salvation. If that is not what limited atonement, being passed over for salvation and double predestination means, please clarify for me.
Or don’t you believe that there are those that have no chance of salvation as Calvinism in general seems to hold? I’m confused!
The Bible doesn’t say why some Israelites looked on the serpent while others didn’t. You’re ASSUMING it’s because they all could and some chose to do so, and then you’re using that as a prooftext against Calvinism even though the actual text says nothing whatsoever about the issues on which we differ.
That’s my major point, and it’s sufficient to completely dismiss your argument: your argument is pure speculation.
-Wm
William,
I guess the text never says that anyone didn’t look on the serpent and live either. The way it reads, I have always thought that all could look at it and live.
But you are right, it doesn’t say for sure so I guess it is speculation. I grant you the point! 🙂
Cheryl, could you rephrase post #75? Sorry, I don’t understand it. Are you saying something about speculating that people might have NOT looked at the snake and then lived anyhow?
I don’t understand how that relates to our discussion. Are you perhaps being sarcastic?
What I’m saying is that we don’t know whether all people could look to the serpent. We do know that not all people can come to Jesus. He says so, and indicates that some of the people following him at the time were among those who could not come to Him.
Therefore, your claim that we know that all of the Hebrews were completely free to look is irrelevant, even if it were true.
-Wm
William,
My comment wasn’t very clear at all. I probably could not have understood it if I was you, or anyone else either!
I was making 3 points–(hope this clarifies):
1. You seemed to assume that some people didn’t look at the serpent and live–that I believe is speculation.
2. I have always thought all people could look at the serpent and live. Still do, but it doesn’t actually say that, so that too is speculation.
3. Since all we have here is speculation, I concede your point: it’s sufficient to completely dismiss your argument: your argument is pure speculation.
(I just couldn’t resist throwing in that you were speculating too unless there is a verse somewhere else that proves your point, (1), that I an unaware of.)
And if it wasn’t so late and I wasn’t so tired, maybe I would make better sense. Can always hope any way! 🙂
I’m going to bed!!
Thank you for clarifying. Yes, I agree.
I’d say the Serpent is an example of salvation gained by looking to God for salvation, and in that sense it’s a type of Christ. I don’t think we can reliably carry the comparison any further.
-Wm
Wm Tanksly,
If man’s nature is fixed and cannot change, then Calvinism is false since total depravity posits such a change in human nature, namely that some of its essential constituents are lost. It would also preclude the possibility of regeneration as well.
Even on a Calvinist gloss though, the lapsed condition isn’t human nature properly speaking. Consequently one cannot generalize from our condition to human nature’s essence.
Perry, thank you for your responses in this and other threads. You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’ve been slow to respond. But this one seems simple:
I’m working from my definition of “nature”: a nature is the set of regular laws which a thing follows. I know the EO definition is different, since the EO holds that the Will is located in the Nature, but I simply don’t understand that. I’d love to hear a definition which explains how that makes sense. Willing just seems like such a _personal_ action. Locating the will in the nature would seem to make it possible for an impersonal thing to will (if it could by nature will) and that seems absurd to me.
So because it’s part of my definition of a nature to be regular, a change in nature would be extraordinary. It certainly couldn’t come from the natural being itself, since the being must follow its nature, not rule over its nature. In Adam’s case, the change came from the promise God made: “the day you eat from it you will surely die.”
In the regenerated Christian’s case, the change comes from the regeneration worked by the Spirit.
This contradicts every definition of Total Depravity I’ve seen. TD is usually used to mean that every part is touched by sin, but that doesn’t mean that any part is *missing*. You say elsewhere that it means that the imago dei is missing, but that isn’t possible, because James explicitly uses the current image of God in man as a motivation for his exhortation to not curse men. (Some Calvinists may forget this explicit argument, but surely not ALL of them.)
-Wm
Perry, the Parchment and Pen guys made another claim about the EO on this post, and I wondered if you might have some clarifications.
-Wm
Wm Tanksley,
I am not sure that that is a sufficient definition of nature since there seems to be cases where the definition applies but don’t seem to be things that have a nature, at least not in terms of essence. But that aside, an essence or nature seems rather to be a property or set of properties that a thing has necessarily in so far as should it fail to have them (it) it ceases to be the thing that it is. That may have something to do with law like behavior or it may not. There are no laws of psychology for example such that one can plug in the laws and the data and predict an agents actions. (Calvinists too have historically denied not only mechanistic determinism but psychological determinism. The kind of soft determinism Calvinists endorse is a metaphysical thesis, not a psychological one.)
The Reformed too locate the will qua power of choice in the nature. If they didn’t, then the Edwardian line of argumentation wouldn’t go through. And second, they have affirmed that Christ has two natures, and two wills but is only one person. If the will is hypostatic or personal then either Christ is not fully human since he would lack a human will or if he has a human will, Christ is two persons. Either option is heterodox.
I don’t deny that willing as an act is done by persons, just as the act of thinking is, but that doesn’t imply that there isn’t a natural faculty of the intellect by which said thinking gets done and so it doesn’t imply that there isn’t such a faculty or power such as the willing by which said willing gets done. Christ wills in a natural and human way.
Wm. Tanksley,
Your comment that the will as natural is absurd because it would imply impersonal things will seems to confuse the power of choice with the act of choosing. That is not the position in question and so it escapes the criticism.
In any case, I can’t see how your comments actually get around my criticism. If nature is fixed, then Calvinism is false since it postulates an essential change in human nature brought about by human choice. On your view such a change is impossible and it is so, since as you say “the being must follow its nature.” Did Adam follow his nature or no? The same goes for regeneration. If the nature can’t logically be changed by definition in the first place, then obviously the Spirit can’t change it.
As for the biblical reference, doesn’t this depend on whether death is a change in the essence of human nature or no? Is it a cessation or an alteration? If there is one pink gopher in the world and it ceases to exist, that doesn’t change the nature of the pink gopher.
Actually what I posited doesn’t contradict the thesis of total depravity, but is an articulation of it, whether it is the Reformed or Lutheran variety. As I noted previously, both the Reformed and the Lutherans take righteousness to be an intrinsic constituent of the imago dei, which constitutes human nature as such. This was a fundamental and major sticking point between the Reformers and Rome, with Rome holding that righteousness, as an aspect of grace, was added to nature. Here Rome upheld Augustine’s view and the Reformers that of the Pelagians. For confirmation I’d suggest picking up say Turretin, Hodge or any other major Reformed systematic theology on the question of original righteousness. ( See Turretin’s Institutes of Eclenctic Theology, Vol. 1, pp. 462-473 for example.) On the Catholic side, see Henri de Lubac’s work, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, &, The Mystery of the Supernatural.
Wm. Tanksley,
TD is glossed as you say, *with respect to every other constituent remaining after the fall and not with respect to original righteousness.* And no, I didn’t say that the imago dei is missing in TD, but that the imago dei *as such* is lost because it lacks all of its essential parts. What is left is an altered image. If this wasn’t so, the Covenant of Works would not make sense at all since under that covenant, Adam of his own natural ability could have merited eternal life. This only makes sense if nature is intrinsically graced or if righteousness is natural, which again is just pure Pelagian anthropology.
The passage from James I would take as disproof of the Reformation view of original righteousness so I don’t think it helps your case. If men are to be respected on the basis of being in the image of God, either God’s image was changed by human choice, compromising divine sovereignty, or the image of God includes moral evil since our corrupted state now is a reflection per Reformed theology of the image we retain.
I was giving my definition of ‘nature’ in hopes that you would give yours, and I was also explaining why my lack of knowledge of your definition made me confused about some of the positions you’d taken.
But now you’ve given two clear definitions: (1) the set of properties which an entity must have in order to be that kind of thing; and (2) the thing’s essence. (Both are helpful to me, and I know how you’re using them to mean the same thing although my sloppy paraphrasing may have messed up your clear meaning.)
I might now have some clue what you’re talking about when you say that the will is located in the nature. You mean that having a will is a required part of being a human. That seems just eminently sensible, and that makes me happy (if your position makes sense to me, it’s likely that I’ve understood it correctly).
I’ve got to think about this for a while.
-Wm
I just realized I made a mistake. James isn’t using the term ‘the image of God’ (eikonos Theou), but rather ‘the likeness of God’ (homoiwsin Theou). Interesting. I’d assumed the former because James seemed to condemn any ill-speaking about men; apparently he’s only condemning ill-speaking about goodness in men.
But we do not retain the divine likeness in perfection; if we did, it would be a homoousios rather than a homoiousios. And Christ, not us, has homoousios.
Clearly, though, there’s more than sufficient Biblical evidence that man retains the divine image (James is hardly the only passage to explain that).
Total Depravity would mean that our reflection of the image of God is sullied, yes. I think this IS why Reformed thinkers tend not to distinguish between the Image and the Likeness, whereas Orthodox do so distinguish.
I certainly don’t agree with your charge that the reformed position compromises divine sovereignty; such a compromise would require that God sovereignly decreed that the image would not be sullied and the likeness would be, and I don’t see that specified. That’s a distinctively EO theory, not an explicitly scriptural doctrine. (Although, with that said, I do like the idea of distinguishing between the two words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’. I’m just not sure it’s supported by Scripture’s use of the two.)
-Wm
george57 this is surly one one the best breakdowns of Prevenient grace. that i have read for a while, c Michael you do a great job of putting together this false teaching, lets face it we are little lost boys who get lost in the mall, when mummy leaves us for a few moments, we know that as j piper says, if you start out with the map of god up side- down, and then how do we ever expect to find any truth, if any person or church like the c colson, b Graham, and pals, leaves out gods sovereignty, that why, the love the pope and never give any warnings to come away to the lost, , hell, is a joke to this people, all roads lead to heaven, lets search and work for the truth, and beinging a cavinist is the nearest we will find, here in scotland, we had the pope, giving out blessings, to the lost on tv, so so sad, and now in our own camp site , we get our people want to believe lies, and half-truths, c Michael could you do a message on HELL, PLEASE, I DONT THINK, BELIEVERS SOMETIMES really know about whats going to happen to the lost, hell is real, and most people are going to this place , so time short, lets get the facts right, study, and go and tell, true doctrine, god bless from scotland.
hi, who gets the glory, man or god, never in Romans 9 or anywhere does man get anything but ,,,,,,,what GRACE, or the questions to be asked is, who gets the glory, lets me see where does doctrine that gives man glory yes or no mind, you lets not forget our mind is fallen, our thinking beyond our selfish ways is evil] so , lads my teaching is if we look far in bible then all gods truth will be backed up, and will be found, but in truth we are born sinners, then if we move towards god, in tears, oh lord I am a sinner, that’s it not any other words, we are sinners, true born believers hear his voice, and bow their heads and follow, him,,,,, others just keep moving around asking silly questions, we have great god filled teachers , and we have bad evil teachers, some of the biggest churches in the world, don’t even preach the true gospel, so man trying to tell god how things should be is sin, upon sin, god is in charge, Christ gets all the glory, only Christ, god bless.
Perry and William,
The imago Dei in Scripture is not the man’s nature, but the man’s role. Man is the representative of God’s sovereignty in the created order over chaos. He has a moral obligation to fulfill it. He fails to fulfill it in the Fall, but is still made by God to be that image and is called upon to repent and fulfill it. All of this talk about the imago Dei as an expression of a man’s nature, and whether it’s corrupted, etc., misses the point. A biblical anthropology in terms of man’s nature must be developed from elsewhere.
I have a couple of problems with this entire discussion:
1) This assumtpive language that there are only two choices on the menu; Calvinism and Arminianism; there is a thrid choice that has been around since the 17th century called Molinism that has seena resurgence since mid-1980’s (see Plantinga and WL Craig)
2) The redefining of terms (libertarian free will, compatibilism); these terms have been redefined in the TTP curriculum to mean other than has long been accepted in the philosophy encyclopedia.
Calvinism logically results in theistic determinism and becomes logically incoherent.
Warren, Molinism has indeed enjoyed a resurgence; it’s commonly used as a backdrop for Arminianism, although of course it’s actually Catholic.
But it’s incredibly ironic that you’d promote Molinism while condemning Calvinism for resulting in determinism. Yes, some Calvinists are determinists; I myself am. But I reached that for philosophical reasons, not Calvinistic. Molinism, on the other hand, is deterministic to its core: it says that once God knows what circumstances a given soul will undergo, He can compute everything that soul will ever do. Total determinism, and worse yet, determinism that gives credit (or damnation) to the soul for its innate ability to accept Christ.
The TTP curriculum uses the classical meaning of the terms, rather than the modern philosophical definition (since the early 80s, due to van Inwagen). I was myself shocked to see the new definitions; I’m not completely happy with them, but they are standards.
-Wm
there is some kind of glitch or I am dumb because only comment sup to #50 are showing.
Hodge,
I disagree regarding the imago dei in Reformation theology. First, Reformed and Lutheran representative works uniformly say the opposite to what you claim. Second, they argue on the basis of that view that a change in the imago dei entails a change in human nature. If this wasn’t so, total depravity would be baseless and a purely Pelagian anthropology would follow in terms of role and his nature being unharmed after the fall.
M Tanksley,
The Orthodox distinguish between image and likeness. Likeness is generally acquired through habituation.
Also, having the divine likeness would might entail having the divine essence, if the Orthodox adhered to the Latin view on divine simplicity, but we don’t. This is in part why we have the doctrine of the energies. We become deified in terms of the divine energies, not essence.
I don’t doubt there is biblical data to support the idea that man retains the divine image, but that of itself will likely leave the Reformed view untouched since they will argue that it is retained relative to this or that feature.
Total depravity would not entail that our reflection of the imago dei is sullied since that line would imply that we do not have the divine image. The Reformed do not distinguish between image and likeness for a few reasons. First, they take the biblical usage as at times interchangeable to imply complete semantic and therefore normative usage. Second, they take likeness or righteousness to be intrinsic to human nature.
If the Reformed view holds that God willed human nature to be a certain way, then the fall alters what God wills. The only other option is to say that God conditionally willed it to be so, but I don’t think the Reformed will argue for that conclusion. On the Orthodox view God doesn’t decree, rather he makes, and since likeness in terms of personal righteousness cannot be given without the agent’s participation, it is not something he can decree or make anymore than God can make a square circle.
WM,
As I’ve indicated before Molinism is one of those things that difficult to wrap ones head around. Maybe this tidbit will help, maybe it won’t. To a Molinist God based on Middle Knowledge knows what all possible universes would look like. Of those possible universes he chose to create this one foreknowing what each individual in this universe would freely choose to do. Now most Molinists would argue that God in doing so chose to create the universe with free agents that would be maximally good.
From this Molinists would argue that God’s meticulous sovereignty is maintained since He chose to create this universe out of the possible universes which could have been created foreknowning everything that would occur. They would also then say that libertarian free will is maintained because our choices are still free. We have not been determined by God to choose to do right or wrong, or even willed by God to do right or wrong. We actually make a transcendent free will choice to do right or wrong.
Now something doesn’t strike me as right here, but I’m not sure why. As discussed in another thread God simply foreknowning what we will use our free will to do doesn’t undermine free will. Although it seems illogical I haven’t come up with a way to prove that God choosing to create universe X instead of universe Y undermines free will either. Thus while I “feel” Molinism is wrong I don’t currently have a rational reason to believe it is.
Michael,
A few corrections. The idea is not universes but logically possilbe worlds, which is a distinct idea in logic. Out of all thelogically possible worlds, not all of them are capable of being created by God in Molinism.
God knows via iddle knowledge because he knows the essences of each individual person and that essence determines what they will do in a given LPW. Given the deterministic relationship between the essence of the individual and their acitons, libertarian free will is logically precluded. In Molinism God determines the agents’ actions by instantiating essences in circumstances that so determine the agent’s actons.
Michael, I mostly agree with Perry’s characterization, except that I think he meant to type “logically possible worlds” instead of “theologically possible worlds”.
The distinction between the two is evident in the example Dr. Craig gives: Peter’s denial. It’s logically possible that a world exists in which Peter was ensouled with the same soul, all things happened as they did up to the denial, but Peter did not deny Christ; but the Molinist holds that Peter’s soul would, given those circumstances, actually always deny Christ; and thus the logical possibility is counterfactual for that world arrangement, and God could not create that world because Peter’s free will would never possibly work that way.
According to this doctrine, God knows all logically possible worlds by Natural Knowledge; He knows all worlds allowed by free will by Middle Knowledge (which excludes some logically possible worlds because the free wills in them won’t actually act that way in that circumstance); and He knows everything about the one world he actually actuated by Free Knowledge.
A true free-will Arminian will reject this utterly because it’s HARD predestinarian; one’s past circumstances together with the particular soul one was created with utterly determines one’s actions. A Calvinist will reject it because it denies God the ability to design each soul according to His pleasure (he can only accept what the soul would do in that circumstance).
Because of that last problem, the reason a Calvinist would reject it, it seems clear that Molinism implies that God does not have the power to design souls; this comes dangerously close to saying that God does not have power over creating souls, so that either the design of each soul or the soul itself preexists Creation.
-Wm
WM and Perry,
I’m not sure about Molinism as described by Molina as I have never studied it. The only form of Molinism I have any knowledge of is that professed by Craig. I’m not sure he would agree with Perry’s articulation of his beliefs. The reason I say this is 1) simply because he affirms LFW and if Perry’s articulation is true any idiot, much less WLC, could see the logical contradiction – you are just replacing the “nature” in Reformed Theology with “essences” that determine actions, and 2) I have never read WLC discuss “essences” anywhere – I suspect this may be a East-West mismatch in language that often occurs.
Michael, I recently listened to Craig’s “4 views” podcast, then a chapter from his book “The Only Wise God”, and the example regarding Peter came from him.
Craig responds to this argument here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7437
And the response is logically incoherent, because although he claims that the action is not determined, the fact is that when God actuates that possible world, Pilate (in the example given) will actually choose the single action that God intended him to, as God intended. The action is actuated just as the possible world is actuated, and the possible world is actuated precisely because God wanted many or most of those choices to turn out as He naturally-knew that they would, and middle-knew that they could, happen.
Interestingly, Craig also protests that if you accept this, middle knowledge would collapse into natural or free knowledge. He’s right; it does. Middle knowledge does no actual explanatory work.
-Wm