I'm going to comment on an interview with Oliver Crisp:
There are many tensions in his interview, but one in particular is the tension between ecumenism and the progress of dogma. The progress of dogma is divisive and sectarian rather than ecumenical. The progress of dogma generates increasing theological divergence rather than convergence over time.
The less people are required to agree about, the more they agree. It's easy to agree with the uninterpreted statements in the Apostles' creed. That conceals a lot of latent disagreement. It's easy to agree with the Nicene Creed, because it only covers a few topics.
The Westminster Confession is more sectarian because it covers far more ground. The more theological questions you presume to answer, the more room for disagreement that creates or exposes.
The progress of dogma begins with many open questions in theology. Over the centuries, more questions are given official answers. There are ever fewer open questions. People takes sides. That's moving apart.
The catholic creeds of the first few centuries of the church are a secondary tier of norm that witnesses to Scripture. Then we have confessions that represent particular church bodies, like the 39 Articles of Anglicanism—which are very Reformed, I might add—and the Westminster Confession for Presbyterians. Confessions are a third tier of witness, norms that stand under Scripture and the catholic creeds.
I understand that that ranking system is appealing to an ecumenist. But if we're truth-seekers, why would the earliest creeds, the most theologically underdeveloped creeds, outrank later, more theologically reflective creeds?
Or one might end up cherry-picking some things and not others.
What about a different agricultural metaphor? Winnowing the wheat from the chaff?
No one theologian, however important, can trump the voice of the church expressed in the creeds or confessions.
Are creeds or confessions "the voice of the church"? Creeds and confessions are formulated by a handful of bishops or theologians. They can be appropriated by "the church." Christians can embrace them. But they don't start out as "the voice of the church." They must earn that right. They must be true. A creed can speak on my behalf if it's true.
But in that respect, a theologian a trump a creed. It just depends on who is right.
There's no tradition of universalism in Calvinism. No universalism in Reformed confessions. Heck, no Reformed theologians of any note who espouse universalism.
Perhaps that's why he tries to classify Barth as a Reformed theologian. To use Barth's implicit universalism as a foothold. But that's circular. That begs the question of whether Barth is Reformed.
And tradition aside, reprobation goes to the deep structure of Reformed theology. It's not just a historical accident–like some inherited doctrines.
Although universal unconditional election is theoretically possible, reprobation concretely demonstrates the unconditionality of election. God doesn't have to save everyone, and he proves it directly by not in fact saving everyone.
Moreover, this isn't just a question of different possible ways to combine different ideas. There are factual constraints on Calvinism. Calvinism is guided by its understanding of revealed truth.
Does he mean universalism is compatible with Calvinism because Calvinism has the internal resources to pull it off? If predestination is true, then God can predestine everyone to be saved? (Which would require other adjustments, like universal atonement.)
If so, how does that fit into his libertarian Calvinism?
Finally, yes, all things being equal, God could save everyone. But what if, all things considered, God has objectives which conflict with universal salvation?
It's not just a matter of extending the scope of election, while leaving everything else intact. There are tradeoffs.
For that matter, why would God predestine the Fall in the first place if he intended to save everyone?
Two 19th-century Reformed theologians come to mind. The first is William Cunningham, who was a professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of the founding fathers of the Free Church of Scotland. He wrote an important essay on this topic, arguing that the Westminster Confession neither requires nor denies “philosophical determinism,” as he called it. He believed the Confession is conceptually porous on the matter and doesn’t commit its adherents to determinism, though it doesn’t exclude it either.
He's wrong about that. Cunningham was distinguishing between spiritual inability due to original sin, and Edwardian necessitarianism. Edwards isn't just a divine determinist. Arguably, he's a divine necessitarian.
It isn't just a question of whether humans could do otherwise, but whether God could do otherwise. I think this is related to his appeal to the principle of sufficient reason which he deployed against Arminians. God must have a sufficient reason for what he does. And that means God can't do otherwise. Alternate possibilities aren't live possibilities–even for God.
You have that tension in Leibniz, as well as Aquinas. Cunningham is noncommittal on metaphysical necessity. That's a very strong version of determinism.
One question is what is he opposing? William Hamilton is one of his foils, whom he quotes:
That man has no will, agency, moral personality of his own, God being the only real agent in every apparent act of His creatures…that the theological scheme of the absolute decrees implies fatalism, pantheism, the negation of a moral governor, as of a moral world (471).
Clearly, to reject that is not to endorse either libertarian freewill or merely partial predestination (pace Crisp).
Cunningham then defines his terms:
The advocates of this doctrine [philosophical necessity] maintain that there is an invariable and necessary connection between men's motives and their volitions,–between objects of desire and pursuit as seen and apprehended by them and all their acts of volition or choice; or that our volitions and choices are invariably determined by the last practical judgment of the understanding.The invariable and necessary influence of motives in determining volitions,–and a liberty of indifference, combined with a self-determining power in the will itself,–are thus the opposite positions of the contending parties on this question. The dispute manifestly turns wholly upon a question as to what is the law which regulates those mental processes that result in, or constitute, volitions or choices (484).
Throughout the essays he refers to a "system of necessity" or psychological "laws." He associates philosophical necessity with a regime of psychological laws.
It's an interesting question where that framework comes from. Does that involve a parallel between physics and psychology? Does that involve an extension of Newtonian physics to psychology? Just as there are laws of nature, there are laws of the mind?
On that model, philosophical necessity suggests that God determines human choices through the mediation of psychological laws. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but in any event, the logical alternative to that framework isn't libertarian freedom. It's not as if "psychological laws" are the only way God could determine human choices.
Cunningham says:
Predestination implies that the end or result is certain, and that adequate provision has been made for bringing it about. But it does not indicate anything as to what must be the nature of this provision in regard to the different classes of events which are taking place under God's government, including the volitions of rational and responsible beings (509).
Here he distinguishes between what God predetermines and how he brings it about. He's noncommittal on the mode of execution, but not on the scope or inevitability of predestination.
It [the will] is not emancipated from the influence of God's decrees foreordaining whatever comes to pass. It is not placed beyond the control of HIs providence,–whereby in the execution of His decrees He ever rules and governs all His creatures and all their actions. It is not set free from the operation of those general laws which God has impressed upon man's mental constitution, for directing the exercise of his faculties and regulating his mental processes. But it is set free from the dominion of depravity; and thereby it is exempted from the necessity of willing only what is evil… (521).
Here Cunningham affirms the universality of predestination. Everything is foreordained. Everything comes to pass by God's providence.
The closest thing Cunningham says which might give Crisp is "wiggle room" is:
The doctrine of necessity, when once established, leads by strict logical sequence to predestination, unless men take refuge in atheism. But it does not seem to follow e converso, that the doctrine of predestination leads necessarily to the doctrine of necessity; as men may hold, that God could certainly execute His decrees and infallibly accomplish His purposes in and by the volitions of men, even though he had not impressed upon their mental constitution the law of necessity, as that by which its processes are regulated and its volitions determined (513).
But that doesn't reject divine determinism. Rather, it's noncommittal on a model of divine determinism based on "law-like" mechanism.
He does say, two pages earlier, that:
...we think, unwarranted and presumptuous to assert, that even a self-determining power in the will would place it beyond the sphere of the divine control,–would prevent [God]…from superintending and directing all its movements according to the counsel of His own will (511).
Although taken by itself, a "self-determining power of the will" suggests autonomy, he couches that as a hypothetical position, and even so, he states that in the context of God's ability, even in that hypothetical situation, to control the outcome.
Cunningham distinguishes lack of freedom due to original sin from lack of freedom due to psychological laws. Although he discusses Edwards, one limitation of his analysis is that his interpretation of Edwardian philosophical necessity doesn't consider another definition of philosophical necessity: the principle of sufficient reason.
However, I don't think commitment to the PSR commits one to metaphysical necessity. At most, God must choose the best provided that there's one best thing to choose. But that seems equivocal. Since not all possible goods are compossible, some possible goods must be sacrificed to achieve other possible goods. In that event it's not clear that there is one best choice. The distinctive goods of one possible world are gained at the loss of other distinctive goods. So God is never confronted with a forced option.
Back to Crisp:
On one hand, I am concerned about ecumenical theology and the place of Reformed theology relative to other communions within Christianity. But I am also trying to show there is a significant breadth to the Reformed tradition that is often overlooked, that there is more wiggle room than is often perceived.
Ecumenists are such silly people. Every generation has ecumenists. They fail, just like the previous generation.
That's because ecumenical dialogue consists of ecumenists dialoguing with fellow ecumenists. It's circular from start to finish.
Ecumenists don't really come to agreement. Rather, they wouldn't be ecumenists in the first place unless they were noncommittal on some doctrines. Those are the bargaining chips. That's what they are prepared to give away. Those were always negotiable. Their commitment to ecumenism precommits them to find areas of agreement. Their agreement was a foregone conclusion. So they end where they began. There's no real progress (even if that was a good thing).
Ecumenists remind me of women who knowingly marry philanderers. They think to themselves, "But this time it will be different. He won't cheat on me, because he truly loves me. I'm special. Why, he looked in my eyes and told me that never met anyone like me." Yeah...which is something he says to every woman.
Take, for example, the Book of Confessions of the PCUSA, my own denomination.
Well, I'd say he just tipped his hand.
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