“How can Calvinists believe that God determines even the most heinous of evils (e.g. rape, incest, cannibalism, etc.)?”

A friend told me recently how shocked she was that people could believe something as repulsive as the idea that God decrees/determines all the evil in the world. This idea has been the source of much dispute and even personal antagonism in blogs, forums and such.

 

Let’s label the position, “God determines evil”, Position X. Undeniably the bulk of Christians who hold to this position also hold to a school of theological thought known as Calvinism. This essay will not attempt to expound everything about Calvinism, only those elements which concern position X. My goal is to help the non-Calvinist appreciate the Calvinist view of God’s workings in the world and perhaps see where the Calvinist is ‘coming from’, the virtues/merits attached to the Calvinist position, all in the hope that it will encourage greater dialogue among all parties (or, if nothing else, less friction). The below is structured into two main parts:

 

  • Understanding the Calvinist Mind: A Determinist Theology of Providence
  • Understanding the Calvinist Heart: A Love for God’s Glory and Truth

 

A) The Calvinist Mind : A Determinist Theology of Providence

 

Briefly, Calvinism seeks to defend both the below positions:

 

Position A: “God controls everything”

Position B: “Humans are responsible for evil”

 

The Calvinist distinctive (and what sets it apart from many other theological schools like Arminianism, Molinism, etc.) is its virtually unqualified acceptance of A. William Hasker sums up well:

 

“The central idea of Calvinism is quite simple: everything that happens, with no exceptions, is efficaciously determined by God in accordance with his eternal decrees. As Augustine said, ‘The will of God is the necessity of things.’” (‘A Philosophical Perspective’, William Hasker, The Openness of God, ed. Clark Pinnock, p.141)

 

Calvinists need to answer questions like 1) How do we ‘work out’ the implications of Position A for Position B? Is A consistent with B? 2) Does Position A ‘cover’ Position X? As we might expect, there are as many explanations as there are Calvinists. It is admittedly often difficult to obtain a clear model of the Calvinist view of how God works vis-à-vis human freedom, as this sampling of texts show:

 

Paul Helm:

 

“To say that each particular action is providentially governed by God is not to say that everything is efficaciously determined by God, though it may be to say that everything that occurs is endorsed by God.” (‘The Augustinian-Calvinist View’ Paul Helm, Divine Foreknowledge: 4 Views, ed. James Beilby & Paul Eddy, p.181)

 

John Feinberg:

 

“(There) is room for a genuine sense of free human action, even though such action is causally determined…an action is free even if causally determined so long as the causes are non-constraining… God can guarantee that his goals will be accomplished freely even when someone does not want to do the act, because the decree includes not only God’s chosen ends but also the means to such ends. Such means include whatever circumstances and factors are necessary to convince an individual (without constraint) that the act God has decreed is the act she or he wants to do.” (‘God Ordains All Things’, John Feinberg, Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger & Randall Basinger, p.24-25)

 

Norman Geisler:

           

“God sees what we are freely doing. And what he sees, he knows. And what he knows, he determines. So God determinately knows and knowingly determines what we are freely deciding…(there) is no instrumental cause between God’s sovereign will and human free will…As the doctor makes one decision that the patient should take a pill each day for fourteen days, so God decreed simultaneously from all eternity what takes place sequentially throughout time.” (‘God Knows All Things’, Norman Geisler, Four Views of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom, ed. David Basinger & Randall Basinger, p.73, 79)

 

Some Calvinists are less vague, like D.A. Carson:

 

“If God is absolutely sovereign, in what sense can we meaningfully speak of human choice, of human will?...Must God be reduced to accommodate the freedom of human choice?” (Divine Sovereignty & Human Responsibility, D.A. Carson, p.1)

 

The above should suffice to show that Calvinists or determinists (of all stripes) do recognise a tension in their position and that there are various options in resolving this tension. Harkening back to Position X above, this should assure us that almost NO Calvinists would say without qualification that, “God wanted X to happen.” Furthermore, ALL Calvinists would agree that Man is responsible for X (somehow) and would not hesitate (I’m confident in saying) to advocate for the eradication of social and institutional evils of all kinds.

 

 

B) The Calvinist Heart : A Love for God’s Truth & Glory

 

I’ve been ‘preaching’ for a while now that we must look hard FOR and AT the value in the ideas/views we disagree with (even vehemently). Giving attention to the virtue, potential and/or usefulness of worldviews we reject as false is important to not only enrich our perspectives and provide a more vivid map for our thinking, but it shows, I believe, a good heart. We need to listen to people, be patient with them, take their concerns and principles seriously EVEN AS we’d like them to do the same to our stances. To this end, I offer the following four (by no means exhaustive) points for close consideration by anyone who’s been rebuffed or repulsed by Calvinists and their ideas:

 

1. Calvinists take the Bible seriously and seek to honour God by presenting a theological view they believe best fits with Scripture, a view which (according to their school) portrays God as all-determining in at least some sense (e.g. Job 42:2, Eph 1:11, Prov 16:9, Rom 9:16-21). Calvinists will not compromise with what they hold to be Scriptural truth, in spite of the fact that X is entailed by their views. Whilst we are saddened at the consequence of their view, we can surely commend the principle behind it.

 

This is perhaps the first thing I must bear in mind in spite of my disagreements with their position. That my interpretation of key passages differ with theirs MUST be secondary to the fact that they are striving for faithfulness to what the Bible teaches. Furthermore, it helps for me to realise that almost NONE of them wakes up in the morning saying, “Great! Let’s go out and defend and preach the view that God endorses the murder of babies!”

 

 

2. Calvinists are very concerned about the negative implications of competing views. To give up Position A or determinism (or to allow what we call ‘contra-causal’ freedom or human agency to be genuinely self-determining, as opposed to God-determined) would, in their view, lead to the idea that “God always does only the most that God can do” and that He has FAILED in His purposes somehow. Consider anyone who has suffered a tragedy or a violation or have simply refused Christ. If God had ultimately wanted or had endorsed a better outcome, the fact that this wasn’t realised would logically mean that He has failed to achieve what He desired or planned. And Calvinists can not accept this. ‘Better guilty than impotent’ is the Calvinist’s working dictum of God’s providence.

 

This overflows to OTHER theological problems, like:

 

  • The atonement as being non-sufficient for salvation – Christ’s death wasn’t “enough”. If God doesn’t determine human salvation then obviously human freedom is required to complete the picture. This isn’t “100% grace” and, in popular Calvinist parlance, ‘robs God of the glory due Him’.
  • The Bible as being erroneous (i.e. not ‘error-free’) - since human freedom was involved in the writing.
  • The Final Victory as being merely a possibility, not a logical guarantee – since there’s ever the slight chance that self-determining Man and/or Devil could upset God’s plans.

 

 

3. Calvinists seek to protect various merits in their position which hinge on position A above. On the flip-side (and this probably hasn’t been acknowledged enough by critics), Calvinism has the following merits:

  • Ultimate victory for the Christian is assured, leading to absolute hope (Calvinism logically guarantees salvation) – this is also known as the Perseverance of the Saints i.e. you cannot lose your faith (though some more-committed-than-normal Calvinists would prefer the term, Preservation). This, logically (again), is the end-product of the doctrine of Unconditional Election i.e. true/elect Christians were chosen from all eternity (a’la Rom 8:28-30, etc.). And if God chose you to be His, to suggest that you may end up not His sounds almost contradictory.
  • God’s sovereign action and purpose is ‘given space’ (by acknowledging that we cannot understand God’s ways, we can be open to His surprising action. “God’s ways are not our ways” thus becomes more than a pious filler and helps us surrender our angst and pain to God’s perspective without feeling that we can comprehend everything about that perspective)
  • Human dependence on God for life and growth (for both eternity and present) is total - the doctrine of Total Depravity, whilst mainly a pre-salvation emphasis, surely applies to sanctification i.e. the on-going process of being made in Christ-likeness is “100% God” as was our salvation in Him; no logical/conceptual room for boasting since all the ‘cool stuff’ I’ve done has been determined by God, anyway! (This isn’t to say that Calvinists do at times write/talk as if human cooperation works in partnership with God’s Spirit, but hey they aren’t the only ones struggling with inconsistency! grin!). A clear, comprehensive and charitable take on the issues involved in salvation and sanctification (and religious pluralism) from a moderate (and generous) Calvinist perspective is Who Can Be Saved? Reassessing Salvation in Christ and World Religions, Terrance L. Tiessen (IVP 2004)

 

The point of the above is to show that attacking one tenet of an entire school of thought inevitably creates shockwaves throughout the whole mosaic of beliefs. This is surely one reason why argumentation and debate is usually futile in changing anybody’s minds (who isn’t already committed to a position). Conceding even one tenet (let alone a few important ones) to an opponent can be seismic in consequence. And, of course, we need to bear in mind the ‘loss of benefits’ involved.

 

In our critique of Calvinism (or any other position, for that matter) we should be sensitive to ‘compensate’ for the perceived cancellation of the merits due to that position. This also keeps a check on our dubious tendency to compare the best in our views with the worst in our rivals’.

 

 

4. Calvinists have a rich tradition of deterministic theology stretching back as far St. Augustine and includes Reformers like Martin Luther, John Calvin (obviously) and many other pioneers of the faith. Even the strongest critics cannot deny that these people have been instrumental in realising the kingdom of God in their communities and countries. Such history must be duly factored in any evaluation of Calvinism and requires our humble respect, regardless of our eventual rejection of their ideas.

 

 

Brian McLaren puts it succinctly when he says that each time we ‘do theology’:

 

“…we are clay pots pondering the potter, kids pondering their father, ants discussing the elephant…the noblest and loftiest thing we can do – which is to consider our Creator – always should humble us even as it ennobles us.” (The Church on the Other Side, Brian McLaren, p. 65-66)

 

Also, we should take to heart some advice from Leonard Sweet’s SoulSalsa under a section titled Humility’s Habits:

 

“First, I have no right to critique anyone if I can’t first celebrate him. Celebration comes before critique. There is a musician’s motto: three strokes for each poke. If I can’t say three positive things about someone and lift her up with prayer and thanksgiving to God, I have no warrant for complaint. Second, I should not argue with anybody until I can state their position back to them in such a way that they approve. I never cease to be amazed at how many times this little habit forces my mouth shut. My third habit is to listen to friends for confidence and courage but listen to enemies for wisdom and information…our enemies are people too, with ideas of their own that we can learn from.”

(SoulSalsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living, Leonard Sweet, p.109)

 

I hope this article succeeds at least partially in the first and second habit (btw, Sweet has two more habits of humility in the same section of book – read it!). It should go without saying that celebrating a position doesn’t entail completely agreeing with it. I haven’t yet (smile) removed pieces like this one (on problems with deterministic theology like the Calvinist’s) and this one (a take on Romans 9 counter to Calvinism’s), and I see no inconsistency in writing those works plus the present one.

 

The third habit? I’m practising hard with sojourns into Derrida, Crossan, Foucault and Sartre – and we all thought Calvinism wasn’t tough…(grin).

 

 

Alwyn Lau

11th August 2005

Note: See also my take on the hermeneutics of charity (written as part of an analysis of Derrida’s work).

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