Taboo Calvinism

Most Calvinists I have ever read or heard or spoken to will insist that God is not the author of sin and evil. But can they, real Calvinists, say that with logic on their side? Or, when they say that, from within their own theological system, are they simply sacrificing logic entirely?

Calvin, Edwards, Sproul and Piper, just to name a few leading Calvinist theologians, affirmed that God foreordained the fall of Adam and Eve and thereby all of its consequences. According to one of them, put very bluntly but helpfully, God “designed, ordained, and governs” everything that happens without exception—including sin and its consequences (evil decisions and actions by fallen people).

The question that should automatically arise, then, is how does this avoid making God the author of sin and evil? I don’t think it can—from within the common Calvinist system of God’s sovereignty, providence and predestination of all things.

When asked to explain, to relieve the apparent contradiction, most Calvinists appeal to “secondary causes.” God renders sin and evil certain only through secondary causes. Two come to mind: Satan and fallen human beings. But we cannot avoid going “back” in our thoughts to how Satan came to be evil and how Adam and Eve fell into sin when they had fellowship with God—given that God “designed, ordained, and governed” (and rendered certain) even their evil decisions and deeds.

If Satan (Lucifer) and Adam and Eve fell into sin and evil because God foreordained it and rendered it certain, how is it possible to “get God off the hook?” It isn’t. In every intelligible sense, this view of God and evil traces evil back to God’s intentions.

Ah! Some Calvinists will say: God is not guilty because his intentions in foreordaining and rendering sin and evil and all their consequences certain are good. Satan’s and Adam’s and Eve’s (and ours) are not good. But that’s not the point here. (I could argue that one into the ground also, but I’ll leave that for another time.) Back to the point: It is simply illogical to say that God is not the author of evil insofar as one also believes God “designed, ordained” and rendered it certain—even if through secondary causes and with good intentions.

Two points here. First, in my experience, most young, impressionable evangelical Calvinists have not thought this through. As soon as it is pointed out to them (viz., that logically Calvinism makes God the author of sin and evil no matter what their favorite Calvinist pastor or theologian says) they either say 1) Oh, I hadn’t thought that, or 2) Whatever God does is good just because God does it. The latter is what their Calvinist mentors should say, but usually don’t because it doesn’t answer how God is not the author of sin and evil and it makes God morally ambiguous.

Occasionally a Calvinist theologian, pastor, teacher, writer, will bite the bullet and admit that, from within the Calvinist system, as explicated by Calvin, Edwards, Sproul, and Piper, God is the author of sin and evil. Then, suddenly, he is harshly criticized for falling into heresy.

Logic matters—in every theological system and even in the pulpits. If Calvinists want to avoid logical contradiction they need to “back up” and re-think their whole explanation of God’s meticulous sovereignty in which God designs, ordains and renders certain everything that happens without exception or else admit that they do believe (whether consciously or hidden even from themselves) that God is the author of sin and evil.

(Footnote: I do not consider anyone a consistent, true Calvinist who does not believe God foreordained the fall of humanity and rendered it certain. Here, in this essay, I am addressing only those true, consistent Calvinists who, together with Calvin, believe God foreordained the fall of humanity and everything else and rendered everything certain according to a divine plan. There are all kinds of people who call themselves “Calvinists” who I do not consider “real Calvinists” and there are all kinds of people who call themselves “Arminians” who I do not consider “real Arminians.”)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/10/comes-calvinism-logic-can-lead-heresy/

1. Not surprisingly, his article was mechanically plugged by SEA. It's striking how many freewill theists are absolutely obsessed with this formulation. The question represents a taboo. An irrational, superstitious line in the sand. It serves the same polemical function as liberal questions like: do you believe in "marriage equality", global warming, transgenderism, evolution? The purpose of these questions is to pigeon-hole people. These are litmus test questions. If they give the "wrong" answer, then the questioner feels justified in dismissing their viewpoint without argument. Their denial is treated as beyond the pale. It is unacceptable to even debate that question. The position is summarily classified as out of bounds.

2. Why do freewill theists act as if casting the issue in terms of a particular metaphor ("authorship") is a good way to frame the question? Why has that formulation acquired canonical status in freewill theism?

3. An obvious problem with a metaphorical question is that the scope of the metaphor needs to be defined. What do they mean by "author" of sin and evil? Can they offer a literal synonym or explanation? 

For instance, freewill theists act as if it's duplicitous for Calvin, the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Confession to deny that God is the "author" of sin. But in my experience, they never bother to investigate what that phrase meant in historical theological usage. It doesn't even occur to them to ask whether their 21C definition corresponds to 16-17C usage. 

4. I have a policy of not answering ambush questions. There's no right answer to the wrong question. I reserve the right to reformulate trick questions, loaded questions.

5. When pressed, they sometimes define authorship of sin in terms of causing sin, determining sin, or causally determining sin. In my experience, "causal determination" has become another stock phrase in freewill theist polemics. But what's the difference between causing x, determining x, and causally determining x? Have they bothered to distinguish those concepts, or is "causal determinism" just another reflexive rote formula? 

6. Here's one way to field the question: if Calvinism makes God the author of sin, then so does Thomism, Arminianism, Molinism, Lutheranism, open theism, Deism, &c. What theistic position doesn't make God the author of sin?

Here's a standard philosophical definition, by David Lewis: 

We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it. Had it been absent, its effects — some of them, at least, and usually all — would have been absent as well.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/#CouCauDep

On that definition of "authorship," freewill theism makes God the author of sin and evil. 

7. What about "determinism? Here's one definition:

Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html

Is Calvinism deterministic in that sense? That's still ambiguous:

i) If by "antecedent states" is meant a casual chain of events, then Calvinism does not entail determinism. For instance, God has predestined every miracle, but a miracle, in the classical sense (in distinction to a coincidence miracle) is not the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states. Indeed, miracles, in the classical sense, are causally discontinuous with the past. Miracles are the effect of a cause that falls outside the ordinary course of nature. Indeed, the same reference work goes on to say:

More strictly, determinism should be distinguished from pre-determinism, the idea that the entire past (as well as the future) was determined at the origin of the universe.

Nor should determinism be confused with determination, the idea that events (including human actions) can be adequately determined by immediately prior events (such as an agent's reasons, motives, desires), without being pre-determined back to before the agent's birth or even back to the origin of the universe.

Yet Calvinism is about predeterminism (i.e. predestination, foreordination, election, reprobation) rather than determinism, per se. In principle, an outcome can be determinate without being predeterminate. An agent may effect an outcome without any premeditation or forethought. An unplanned event can still be determinate. 

ii) If by "antecedent states" is meant the decree, then it's true that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of the decree.

iii) That, however, doesn't mean the decree is necessary. If by "antecedent state" is mean God's prevolitional contemplation, then the decree is a contingent rather than necessary truth. God's nature is logically or conceptually independent of the decree inasmuch as God was at liberty to decree a different outcome, had he so desired. Although the decree necessitates subsequent states, no antecedent state necessitates the decree. 

iv) Conversely, the God of freewill theism determines the future. There are different ways that can be the case. If God instantiates a possible world, then he thereby determines that particular world history. That's what possible worlds are: alternate world histories. Once God instantiates a possible world, everything falls like dominoes according to the history of that particular world.

If God foreknew the historical consequences of making our world, yet he goes right ahead and does it, then the outcome must exactly match the foreseen consequences of his creative fiat. 

Likewise, an agent can ensure an outcome through inaction. Take the case of a baby carriage rolling down a hill unless I intervene to stop it. If I refrain from preventing that outcome, my nonintervention renders the outcome certain. In that sense, doing nothing can be deterministic. Just let nature take its course. 

8. Olson seems to implicitly define "authorship" of sin and evil to mean God "designed, ordained and rendered it certain". But how does that stand in contrast to freewill theism?

i) How does Olson distinguish "ordain" from "render certain"? And I've already explained how an agent can render an outcome certain through nonintervention. But does that ipso facto exonerate an agent? If I simply let a baby carriage, with the baby inside, roll down the hill into a busy intersection, does that "let me off the hook"? My refusal to get involved ensured the tragic outcome.

ii) But suppose it wasn't a sure thing that the baby would die at the bottom of the hill, when his carriage was run over by a car. Suppose it was only probable. Does that let the bystander off the hook, for refusing to get involved? 

iii) What does Olson mean by "designed"? It's true that according to Calvinism, every event happens by design. But how does that stand in contrast to freewill theism? If God knows the future, if God knows the historical consequences of making the world, then didn't God intend the consequences of his own creative fiat? If God saw it coming, if he made the world, then those can't be unplanned events. In every intelligible sense, this view of God and evil (e.g. Molinism; simple foreknowledge) traces evil back to God’s intentions.

iv) Even in open theism, God knows that he may be risking the well-being of his rational creatures. God knows that he may well be putting them in harm's way. We generally consider it culpable to endanger the mental health, physical health, or lives of human beings. So even if the open theist God didn't plan it, that is not ipso facto exculpatory. 

9. If freewill theists can define "authorship" of sin and evil, why are they so fanatically attached to that particular formulation? Why not use synonyms that are less opaque?

i) Typically, freewill theists define causation or determinism in a way that automatically includes Calvinism while automatically excluding their brand of freewill theism. But that's a textbook example of a tendentious definition. A stipulative definition that's custom-made to preemptively exempt your own position from what you find objectionable in the opposing position. Classic special pleading. The game is rigged for the Calvinist to lose.  

ii) If a polemicist for freewill theism were to stop hiding behind "author of sin" and reformulate the question is more prosaic, explicit terms, like "Does Calvinism make God cause or determine sin and evil in a way that freewill theism doesn't make God cause or determine sin?", then the question would lose most of its sting. It would reduce to the tautology that in Calvinism, God has a different relationship to sin and evil than in varieties of freewill theism. But it goes without saying that Calvinism is different than freewill theism. So that observation is rather insipid. 

iii) Moreover, to say that Calvinism makes God cause or determine sin and evil in a way that freewill theism does not isn't equivalent to saying freewill theism does make God cause or determine sin and evil. Just that in freewill theism, God causes or determines sin and evil in a different way than Calvinism. But once we drop the polemical slogans and begin to explicate the underlying concepts, that greatly complicates the comparison. The facile rhetorical advantage that freewill theism enjoys is suddenly exposed as verbal sleight-of-hand. 

10. Furthermore, the question is an exercise in misdirection. The reason Calvinists believe that God predestined sin and evil is, in the first instance, because they believe that's a revealed truth, and they believe divine revelation (i.e. Scripture). A more honest question would be whether the Bible makes God the "author" of sin and evil. You can't just discredit Calvinism by attacking the perceived consequences of Calvinism. For that's secondary to the primary question of whether Calvinism mirrors God's self-revelation in Scripture. The deeper question is whether you can discredit Calvinism without discrediting biblical theism–if both positions have the same ("unacceptable") consequences. 

11. And that isn't just hypothetical. Olson has an aversion to OT theism. There's a contradiction in his own position. He wants to say that Jesus is his standard of comparison, but the very same Jesus reportedly venerates OT theism. Yet Olson refuses to affirm that God issued the "abhorrent commands" in the "texts of terror". For Olson, logic only matters when attacking Calvinism. When defending freewill theism, he takes refuge in obfuscation.

Another example is natural evil. He's outraged when Calvinists like Piper attribute natural disasters to God, yet Olson fails to explain how the God of freewill theism can avoid complicity in natural evil. Olson can't honestly appeal to the buffer of second causes to insulate God from natural evil, in part because he's contemptuous of that appeal when Calvin invokes it, and in part because God is the ultimate cause of most natural evils, even in freewill theism. Most natural disasters are the result of physical determinism. God created the natural processes that inevitably produce natural disasters, barring divine intervention. We can't avoid going "back" in our thoughts to how God set up the initial conditions. 

12. Notice that Olson cites Calvin, Edwards, Sproul and Piper. But Sproul and Piper are popularizers, while Edwards was an 18C theologian and Calvin was a 16C theologian. If you're going to raise philosophical objections to Calvinism–and theodicy is an issue in philosophical theology–you should have the integrity to target the most astute and advanced representatives of the opposing position. Olson, like Walls, has a really bad habit of attacking soft targets rather than engaging the best contemporary Reformed philosophers.