A common objection to Calvinism is that according to Calvinism, God causes evil. A problem with that objection is not that it's false, but that it's not unique to Calvinism. In varieties of freewill theism, there's a sense in which God causes evil. So that objection doesn't single out Calvinism. I'd add that the same outcome can have multiple agents and multiple causes leading up to the outcome. Divine agency is a necessary cause of whatever happens, but hardly the sole factor.
But let's consider the issue from another angle. Suppose my wife and I have foreknowledge and counterfactual knowledge about what will happen if we do or don't have kids. Unless we practice contraception, we'll have two sons. When they become teenagers, one son will kill his brother under the influence of temporary psychotic drug high. We know that will happen, but we don't know the date, so we can't intervene to prevent it. The only way we can preempt that outcome is to refrain from having kids.
If despite that advance knowledge, we go ahead and have kids, did we cause the death of our son? And assuming we caused his death, are we to blame? Would it have been better for us remain childless?
But that poses something of a dilemma. It's a tragedy that our son is died as a teenager. He suffers a grave deprivation as a result of his untimely demise. And his death was, in a sense, avoidable.
However, the cost of averting that preventable evil is to deprive him of existence altogether. Not having the opportunity to exist at all is a more radical, totalistic deprivation than premature death as a teenager. So is he better of living for 15 years, then dying, or is he better off never having the gift of life in the first place?
We could also up the ante by saying he died a Christian and went to heaven. So he has different things to lose under both scenarios. In one case, he misses out on the gift of life. The lost opportunity of existence, culminating in eternal bliss. In the other case, he misses out on a full lifespan. So the good and evil are intertwined.
there's a sense in which God causes evil
ReplyDeleteThis is where people stumble over words like "causes", because at the same time, God does not approve of evil. That God ordained evil to happen means He decided beforehand to allow sin and evil to come into existence, giving some of the angels and Adam and Eve free will to choose; and knowing infallibly these things as part of God's infallible foreknowledge / fore-ordaination.
James Swan has an interesting article that points out that even Calvin (in the Institutes, see the reference in Swan's article) cautioned against trying to figure out things in God's mind in eternity past, rather the Genesis account is written to show the blame and responsibility is on us as humans and descendents of Adam and Eve.
https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2020/02/calvin-cites-augustine-will-of-god-is.html
See my comments in the comment box:
. . . Calvin goes on to say that we should spend our time contemplating Adam as the evident cause of the fall rather than "seek a hidden and utterly incomprehensible cause in God's predestination":
Me: This is good advice and seems to be the intention of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapters 1-3 never go back in time to explain how the cherub ("Lucifer", KJV, Isaiah 14:12 - "shining one" / "star of the morning") became Satan / the serpent (Ezekiel 28:12-17 - the spirit behind the King of Tyre - "you were in Eden, the garden of God", "you were the anointed cherub", "your heart was lifted up because of your beauty"; "you corrupted your wisdom . . . " ) or when or how God's decree decreed the fall of Lucifer or the fall of mankind. or even who the "serpent" of Genesis 3 is - Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 tell us that. Interesting that Satan is in Job chapters 1-2 and Zechariah 3:1-4, but those texts don't say he is one in the garden as a serpent. 2 Corinthians 11:3 tells us that the serpent tempted Eve, but it does not use the word "Satan" or the "devil" explicitly that the serpent is Satan.
The eternal decree of God in eternity past is mysterious and hidden; the doctrine of God's decree is derived from other texts - Ephesians 1:11; Psalm 139:16; Isaiah 45:7; Acts 2:23; 4:28; Genesis 50:20; Romans chapter 9; Proverbs 16:4; Amos 3:6; Lamentations 3:37-38 (balanced with Lam. 3:32-33)
Even all of this, the time it takes to put it all together and in Systematic Theologies and the WCF chapter 3 "On God's Decree" and 1689 2nd London Baptist Confession, chapter 3, etc. -
did they and we spend too much time in seeking to figure all this out?
Of God’s Eternal Decree
1. God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel
of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes
to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, [ so glad for this ! ] nor is
violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
In Genesis chapters 1-3, the blame/ guilt is put on us, the humans, going back to Adam and Eve.
So, when an Arminian or non-Reformed person hears us say "God ordained evil" or "in some sense caused evil" - IMO, we should always explain that this means that God decided beforehand to allow sin / evil to enter and be; but that God is holy and never approves of evil; ie, as the confessions say "God is not the author of evil" - God does not approve of sin - Habakkuk 1:13; Psalm 5:4; Isaiah 6; 1 John 1:5; James 1:13-14
i) Christians stumble over the notion that God causes evil in part because they haven't thought deeply about how every theological position, whether Calvinism or freewill theism, implicates God in evil in *some* sense. There's just a knee-jerk reaction to the notion that God causes evil at all. But that's just unavoidable.
Deleteii) Now, there are different ways to cause something.
iii) God doesn't approve of evil for its own sake, but God foreordains evil as a means of attaining certain kinds of good that can't exist apart from evil. So God approves of the compensatory goods.
iv) The authorship of evil is a useless way to analyze the issue because it's opaque.
You are right. Most people don't want to go that deep into thinking about that, because emotionally, the initial shock of even the entertainment of such a thought is too harsh to continue thinking about it (a Christian's mind quickly jumps to all the texts about God's holiness and purity and hatred of evil, and God's love and mercy and goodness); so it seems to me most people just turn off and don't go deeper.
DeleteYour point seems to be indicated in Romans 9:22-23 - the vessels of mercy vs. vessels of wrath, etc.
Thing is, we have to play the hand we're dealt. In a world where God and evil coexist, that limits the range of explanations. We can't avoid saying God has something to do with evil.
DeleteThere are, of courses, ways of relating God to evil that would be morally compromising.
Thing is, the existence of evil demands some moral justification, so that means God must have a purpose for evil. The alternative is to say that evil exists in God's world for no good reason.
Swan: If this sounds tricky, Calvin goes on to say that we should spend our time contemplating Adam as the evident cause of the fall rather than "seek a hidden and utterly incomprehensible cause in God's predestination":
ReplyDeleteCalvin:
Accordingly, we should contemplate the evident cause of condemnation in the corrupt nature of humanity—which is closer to us—rather than seek a hidden and utterly incomprehensible cause in God’s predestination. And let us not be ashamed to submit our understanding to God’s boundless wisdom so far as to yield before its many secrets. For, of those things which it is neither given nor lawful to know, ignorance is learned; the craving to know, a kind of madness.
Reference:
Calvin, Institutes, Book 3, chapter 23, 8
I had never read this before [I have only read bits and pieces over the years, mostly depending on Louis Berkhov (systematic textbook in seminary in 1987-1988), Grudem, Sproul and Piper and many others to get Calvin and Reformed theology into an understandable "package" for me], so it was encouraging to read this, which James Swan pointed out.
https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes/institutes.v.xxiv.html