1. A few days ago, Catholic apologist Trent Horn posed this question:
Can any Calvinists tell me why Adam sinned (previous conversations didn't yield much answers). If Adam chose to disobey God, then that seems to contradict Calvinism's view of God's sovereignty. But if God caused Adam to disobey him, then that seems to make God the author of sin.
I'v been of two minds about answering his question. One reason is that it's much easier to ask some questions than answer them. You can pose a deceptively simply question that demands a long qualified answer.
2. A short answer is that Adam sinned because God predestined him to sin. At this stage of the creative process, Adam only exists in God's imagination. God's imagination includes a plot. Adam actually sins (in history) because God reified the imaginary plot. God transferred his idea into a real counterpart in time and space. At that point, Adam is no longer just a character in God's mind, but a conscious agent.
3. Trent then introduces the categories of choice, causality, and authorship. One of the complications in this debate is the stereotypical way of framing the issue. In that respect it's noteworthy that Peter van Inwagen thinks we should scrap that and go back to the drawing board. For instance:
The most salient change I would make, although perhaps not the philosophically most important one, is that I would not now use the phrase ‘free will’. In fact, I would not use even the adjective ‘free’—I would not speak of free actions, free agents, or free choices. Nor would I use the adverb ‘freely’ and the noun ‘freedom’. In my view, these words have little meaning beyond that which the philosopher who uses them explicitly gives them, and yet philosophers persist in arguing about what they do or should mean. They enter into disputes about what “free will” and “free choices” and “acting freely” and “freedom” really are. These philosophers have fallen prey to what I may call verbal essentialism. That is to say, it is essential to their discussions that they involve certain words: ‘free’, ‘freely’, ‘freedom’… It would be impossible to translate their discussions into language that did not involve those words...I would, moreover, not use the phrase ‘could have’—and I would be particularly careful to avoid the phrase ‘could have done otherwise’. ‘Could have’ is grammatically ambiguous, and this has caused a great deal of confusion in discussions of the free-will problem in English...In the revised book, I would not use the phrase ‘moral responsibility’—for, in my view, this phrase is used in current philosophy without any clear sense.
I quote him because Inwagen is a premier freewill theist. So if he thinks that both sides need to reframe the issue, then that calls into question the conventional way the issues and alternatives are cast. We're dealing with philosophical concepts. These didn't fall from the sky fully formed. We have coarse-grained intuitions and examples to illustrate our intuitions, but this demands a lot of fine-tuning. And it's possible that we will be unable to get to the bottom of these issues due to finite human intelligence and the fact that we're too immersed in the experience to have the necessary detachment. We can't crawl out of our own skin to see ourselves from the standpoint of a detached observer. There are limitations to the analysis when the subject tries to make himself the object of analysis.
4. Horn uses the word "choice". So what does it mean to choose? According to Robert Kane, another premier freewill theist:
A choice is the formation of an intention or purpose to do something. It resolves uncertainty and indecision in the mind about what to do. Four Views of Free Will (Blackwell 2007), 33.
That's a psychological definition of choice, and it's neural on the libertarian/determinist/compatibilist/incompatibilist sides of the debate. Consistent with either side you take.
5. However, libertarians often define choice is two different ways:
i) To be the ultimate source of your own choice
ii) To have the ability to choose otherwise under the same circumstances. And the second definition is typically cashed out in terms of access to possible worlds or alternate possibilities. That's called leeway freedom.
Unlike Kane's psychologicl definition, these are more metaphysical.
William Lane Craig is a prominent freewill theist, but he doesn't think leeway freedom is necessary man to be blameworthy.
William Lane Craig is a prominent freewill theist, but he doesn't think leeway freedom is necessary man to be blameworthy.
6. That by itself doesn't distinguish Calvinism from freewill theism, for Calvinism can also make room for possible worlds. Calvinism can say there's a possible world in which Adam obeys God as well as another possible world where Adam disobeys God.
The real question is what agent makes one of those outcomes actual? Is it the divine agent or the human agent?
So there's a sense in which a Calvinist can say Adam could have done otherwise. Indeed, there's a possible world in which Adam did otherwise.
These, however, don't refer to Adam's independent actions, but God's ability to imagine alternate plot endings.
If, moreover, God has predestined Adam to disobey, then Adam can't act contrary to what he was predestined to do. In principle, God might create a parallel universe in which Adam's counterpart obeys God. But that's because he was predestined to obey God in the parallel universe.
7. Horn trots out the authorship of sin. I don't think that's a useful analytical term. It's an intellectual shortcut and blind alley.
The meaning of the phrase is opaque. It's possible to arbitrarily define "authorship of sin" in such a way that Calvinism is implicated while your own position is excepted. But that's just manipulating a definition.
One question is what the phrase meant historically. For instance:
In terms of historical theological usage, Calvinism doesn't make God the author of sin.
8. Suppose for argument's sake we grant that Calvinism makes God the author of sin. Is that a fatal concession? Does that disqualify Calvinism from further consideration? But even if (ex hypothesi), Calvinism makes God the author of sin, that doesn't automatically exempt other positions from the same. To say Calvinism makes God the author of sin doesn't establish a point of contrast. There's no implication that Molinism or Classical Thomism don't make God the author of sin. They, too, may make God the author of sin in the same or similar ways.
9. You don't have to be a Calvinist to use a divine authorship framework. Take the statement by Catholic Thomist Ed Feser:
God as primary cause is like the author of the novel. God’s effects are therefore not to be sought merely in otherwise unexplained natural phenomena, any more than an author’s influence extends only to unusual plot points. Just as a novelist is responsible for every aspect of the story, God is the source of all causality, including ordinary, everyday causes for which we already have good scientific descriptions.
According to Feser's Thomism, God is the author of sin. Of course, in this case, authorship is metaphorical. But Feser recasts the metaphor in literal terms: "God is the source of all causality…"
10. This in turn goes to the concept of causality–which Horn mentions. Here's a standard definition:
The basic idea of counterfactual theories of causation is that the meaning of causal claims can be explained in terms of counterfactual conditionals of the form “If A had not occurred, C would not have occurred”.In terms of counterfactuals, Lewis defines a notion of causal dependence between events, which plays a central role in his theory (1973b).(2) Where c and e are two distinct possible events, e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were to occur e would occur; and if c were not to occur e would not occur.This condition states that whether e occurs or not depends on whether c occurs or not. Where c and e are actual occurrent events, this truth condition can be simplified somewhat. For in this case it follows from the second formal condition on the comparative similarity relation that the counterfactual “If c were to occur e would occur” is automatically true: this formal condition implies that a counterfactual with true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. Consequently, the truth condition for causal dependence becomes:(3) Where c and e are two distinct actual events, e causally depends on c if and only if, if c were not to occur e would not occur.
On that definition, God caused Adam to sin. But that doesn't single out Calvinism. On that definition, the God of Molinism and Thomism caused Adam to sin.
11. We can also distinguish between positive and negative causation. For instance:
Negative causation occurs when an absence serves as cause, effect, or causal intermediary…So what is causation? What is it that positive and negative causation shares, and that misconnection lacks? The moral I would draw is that causation involves at least some aspect of difference making. In both positive and negative causations, whether or not the cause occurs makes a difference as to whether or not the effect will occur…causation has a counterfactual aspect, involving a comparative notion of difference making, J. Schaffer, “Causes need not be Physically Connected to their Effects: The Case for Negative Causation,” C. Hitchcock, ed.Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science (Blackwell 2004), 197-214.
The debate quickly devolves into intractable issues with no clear winners or losers. Although freewill theists recycle stock objections to Calvinism, the issues run very deep and resist decisive debunking. For instance:
Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil (Pickwick 2017)
Heath White, Fate and Free Will A Defense of Theological Determinism (Notre Dame 2019)
Is there a simpler version for non-philosopher, small-brains like me?
ReplyDeleteI think the pertinent issue for laypeople is "Did God determine that X would act in a certain way, then punish X for that action?"
Especially when it comes to the issue of damnation, "Did God determine that Y would reject the Gospel, therefore Y will be tormented in hell for eternity?" If yes, then it seems like God intentionally creates certain people (billions actually) for the express purpose of subjecting them to eternal torment.
I don't think there are simple answers. God predestined how Adam would respond. That may seem unfair, but our impressions are based on shortsighted, coarse-grained intuitions. It involves difficult issues about what kind of freedom or ability is necessary to be a morally responsible or culpable agent. In involves consideration of the alternatives. Are human choices uncaused. If so, are they unpredictable? If uncaused, do we have control over our own choices, or is it just a question of lucky or unlucky timing that we happen to be in a particular mood at the time? Presented with the same choice an hour sooner or later, we might make a different choice. There's no continuity.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a body swap in science fiction. My consciousness is transferred to someone else's body. So what makes that the actions of *my* body? The relationship between consciousness and a particular body seems arbitrary at that point. A body-hopper could jump from one body to the next.