Arguments for Calvinism

I have often thought that one of, if not the, greatest way to find consensus in the Calvinism/Arminianism debate would be to have all those involved listen to the preaching of the rest. Calvinism, it seems to me, provides better grounds for depending on God, and therefore allows an exhibition of his glory farther, than Arminianism does.

I am beginning to wonder about my college's theology for this reason: both of the chapels since classes started have included encouragement that God is guiding us for a good purpose, whether or not it is visibly good from where we stand, and whether or not it involves goods to us. This has been preached without any noticeable caveats about people needing to be sure to follow the Spirit's leading, rather we were encouraged to stop worrying about that. On what foundation can the president and dean of chapel at a Wesleyan, and therefore Arminian, school preach these things?

I would not be surprised if, should the concepts of free will and determinism be totally forgotten for a time, and then recovered during a time of great revival, we should find a great consensus regarding the topic. Indeed, I think we have a good deal more of a consensus than we think, as many Arminians accidentally preach what can best, if not only, be fueled by a Calvinist theology.

Work: Responsibility, Boasting, and Salvation

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. --Ephesians 2:8-9

Often, we (Calvinists) tend to use the use of the word "work" here to support our conception of "grace alone," charging Arminians with making salvation based on works. While I think this is a supportable position, it will be easier to shift the focus a bit.

Why "not a result of works"? The text answers, "so that no one may boast." Thus, "works" covers all those things that would allow us to boast. I take boast here to mean "boast in or of themselves," since Paul elsewhere speaks of boasting in Christ. So, then, what would allow us to boast in or of ourselves? If we are all at the same level in and of ourselves, then we cannot look at another and call ourselves better, thus, we would not in that case be able to boast in or of ourselves. At the same time, if we were in an identical condition, then there would be no reason to call any particularly "saved." Thus, in order that we not be able to boast in or of ourselves, and for some to be saved, those who are saved must not be saved on account of any way in which that they, in or of themselves, are different from others.

Now, on the Arminian view, so far as I understand it, the grace by which we are saved is a grace which makes it possible that any individual have the possibility of salvation, and not a grace which accomplishes anyone's salvation for them. This view of grace would place all people at the same level to begin with, supposing free will to make the difference between one individual who is saved and another who is not saved. Yet, in that case, either such an act of free will does not differentiate one person from another, or is not done in or of that person's self who is freely willing to do such a thing, or, which seems contrary to the verses at hand, one's free choice to believe does differentiate one from others in or of oneself, and thus one's salvation is a cause of boasting. Yet the first two seem contrary to the purpose of free will, for it is by those that free will is supposed to allow for personal responsibility.

Now, one might argue that, if the Arminian view of grace is right, then, since only that grace actually given to us must be impossible to boast of, we must only be unable to boast of receiving that grace which opens a door to salvation. Yet, verse 5 "even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved," this salvation by grace is spoken of as a making us alive together with Christ when we were dead in our trespasses, and, further, it is said, verse 6, "and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," which is the hope of eternal life, and verse 7, giving the point of this salvation, says, "so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." Now, if all this may be said of each and every individual, then I am lost as to how we are to keep from a doctrine which says that all shall be saved unto eternal life, and hell empty, both of which are contrary to scripture.

Causes at Two Levels, Chance, and Free Will

There are various places in Scripture where we can see God saying that he, himself, will do something. Divide the nation of Israel, or bring about what is now referred to as the diaspora, for example. At the same time, historians look at societal forces at that time, and see causes for those things happening. Does that mean that God did not do those things? What was the cause of Job's suffering? As readers, we see Satan making his requests, and there were the Sabeans and Chaldeans who actually killed his children and took his property, but Job himself says "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." and we are told in the very next verse that "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." (Job 1:22).

Thus we say that God acts through means. He ordains what happens, but he also ordains how it is that what happens comes about. These are the two levels of cause, then: by the ordaining will of God, and by the societal and/or physical consequence of other things. The second could be divided again, but I do not find it necessary for this point.

Because God Said So

First, this is always a true answer to the question "Why?" but it is still often the wrong answer, and one should avoid giving it as an answer to a question asked out of curiosity in even the smallest degree (my attitude in this respect apparently makes me fun to troll). At the very least, we ought to indicate some aspect of the nature of God that leads us to believe that this is a helpful answer to the question. This answer is getting at the purpose, what is often called the final cause, of things. It is similar to answering a child's question about why their bedtime is so early by telling them "because I said so," or, which is ethical "because you need to get up at such-and-such a time tomorrow, so if you don't go to sleep now you'll be tired and cranky, and that won't be any fun for either of us"

Because Physics Says So

 This still tends to be a true answer to most questions, although, again, the answer ought to be what about physics makes it so. Where "Because God said so" gets at the purpose, "Because physics says so" gets at the causal sequence that led us to the thing to be explained, which is often called the efficient cause. "Why did the ball drop?" "Because I let go of it, gravity, etc." "But why did you let go of it?" At this point we do not have a story about how the physical interactions led to the person's dropping the ball, and, given Quantum dynamics, it may be by chance. In which case we could say that they were not determined to drop the ball.

Necessity/Possibility and Certainty/Uncertainty

In discussing this, let me make a distinction between what is necessary and what is certain, on the one hand, and what is possible and what is uncertain, on the other. What is necessary is that which would imply a contradiction if the reverse were true instead, and all else that we know, up to the time of the decision, were to remain the same. What is possible is what would not imply a contradiction if the reverse were true instead, and all else that we know, up to the time of the decision, were to remain the same. What is certain is what does happen, and what is uncertain is what may or might not happen. For examples: It is necessary that E=Mc^2, it is certain that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, it is possible that I walk out of my room. I would argue that all events that happen are certain, and that there are therefore no uncertain things.

Free Will?

So, there is a sense in which one could say that we have Libertarian Free Will, the power to choose one way or the other, because it is not necessary, but merely certain, what we will choose. I hold that everything is certain because God made it as it is, and thus we are, theologically speaking, determined, but this does not remove the fact that we may have a form of libertarian indeterminism when we are looking purely at the temporal explanation for our actions. This libertarianism holds when we view ourselves from the immanent perspective of God, and is real, but it does not hold from the transcendent viewpoint of God.

God Made the World. Ergo, Theological Determinism

I would like, here, to return to why I believe that God made all of the world in all time as it is at each time.

First, God certainly made the world in its original state. Second, time is a created thing. Therefore, God created time from a transcendent point of view, and thus created all that happens in and through and to time in the moment that he made it. The world is in time, and thus God, in creating time, created all the acts that occur in time, and acted in time in all the ways that he does and has and will, in response to our prayers. That is to say, his act of creation, because it occurs, at least from one perspective, to be transcendent, causes the cause of the world's beginning of being to be indistinguishable in cause and type from its continuing to be, from that perspective.

Libertarian Free Will and Theological Determinism

Thus, it is accurate to say that we have libertarian free will, and are determined by God to do as we do, and this is no contradiction because we are libertarianly free in the immanent view, but not the transcendent one, and theologically determined in the transcendent view, but not the immanent one. In the immanent view, we are called to seek God, but look from the transcendent view and you will see that God is the one who causes himself to be found in the most glorious way, and so we also say that he seeks us, even when we do not want to be found. Immanently, we choose to act, even sometimes rejecting God, but transcendently God is weaving all our lives into a tapestry that shall glorify him forever, even if we do not know how. From here, I would like to explain the five points of calvinism in light of this, and how one's understanding of them may be altered by this combination of libertarianism and determinism.

Total depravity--our wills can only do what is evil apart from God, I have argued that this is by definition: What is good is to glorify God in thought, word, and deed; to do anything that glorifies any other in the slightest, without intending it to be, at the same time and even more, glory to God, is to sin. This remains in both immanent and transcendent views if one agrees with me about what sin is.

Unconditional grace--If, apart from worshiping God, we can do nothing good, then what good could we do to receive salvation? Salvation is what puts us in the place where our "worship" is no longer abhorrent to God, that is, our "worship" becomes Worship. God has already made certain all of our acts, so that even if we freely will to accept salvation, that was ordained by God, and why should he be kept from ordaining this because we have been sinning in various ways before then? So was everyone else! If he caused none who had been sinning constantly beforehand to be saved, then no one would be saved. Shall we say it was our act of faith? Yes, without faith we would not be saved, but that act is there because, and only because, God put it there for what is really no visible reason to us. There is a sense in which, from the immanent view, God's grace may be seen as conditional upon our acceptance, but our acceptance is worship, and we cannot worship unless God reveals himself to be glorified, and that is from God, not from any human. I may focus in a later post on the temporal order in salvation. This is the point that seems to me to necessitate viewing salvation through both an immanent and a transcendent view.

Limited atonement--really bad phrasing. The work of Christ on the cross and his resurrection are enough for all the world to be saved by, with more left over. However, given that God ordained long before the cross who would finally be covered by Christ's sacrifice, it is not false to say that his sacrifice is only ever going to be applied to some, that is, while any may accept the free gift, and it is offered to all, it is ordained that only some will accept it, and the purpose of Christ in dieing was not to save all, but only those ordained that he save. If his purpose had been to save all, then he failed in his purpose, but because his purpose was to save those whom the Father had given him, he succeeds. The limit is in who will have it applied to them, not how many or who it is enough for. This is in both views, since the Holy Spirit applies our salvation to us in both views, but because of how libertarianism affects Irresistible Grace, holding only an immanent view of salvation which includes this forces you to say that Christ has died for some, who knows how many, but maybe they will be saved, maybe not, and thus it makes more sense, since it reduces to the same thing, to just dispense with it when viewing things immanently.

Irresistible Grace--God's grace in salvation (and all else) is not only necessary, but sufficient, to cause people to be saved. No one, not even the person's own self, can avoid their own salvation when God says "You will be my treasured possession." This is how those who Christ died in order to save are saved, whether with much running, weeping, and fighting, or not. From the immanent view, however, we can say that God's grace is resistible, and many resist for a long time before being saved, and some resist their whole lives, but this is not for want of the power of God.

Perseverance of the Saints--Once God has someone, he has them for good. Any who are truly saved will not die apart from God, and anyone who dies apart from God was never truly saved, though "On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’" (Matthew 7:22-23) By this we know that there are some who will die, and we will all think they believed until their death, but we shall see that they were deceiving themselves and us, and trying to deceive God. In an immanent view, this remains, but if we limit ourselves to judging by what people do, then we must not judge. Who are we to know? We cannot know the mind of a human, that is for God. a person's salvation is between that one and God. Yet we may decide that because of this that we ought to preach and teach as if most of those hearing were totally lost. What can we lose? It is impossible to overemphasize the gospel of Jesus Christ, which affects all of life. Only know that, if you are saved, then God holds you tightly, and you cannot be taken from him.

Calvinism and Arminianism: The Basic Difference

This is in reaction to this post by Dr. Roger Olson: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/october/bonds-of-freedom.html it is excellent in showing how an Arminian can speak of Salvation by faith alone in very similar terms as Calvinists. I decided to respond to it because the amount of similarity in language makes it very clear where the actual disagreement is, which shows up in two places.

First, at the bottom of the third page he says "Free will is simply a God-given capacity for choosing the true freedom offered by God's grace, or else rejecting it through our own self-centered obstinacy." Second, on the fourth page after his analogy about the hose, he says "there can be grace blockers—wrong attitudes and habits, hidden resentments and selfish motives. My "job," as it were, is to find them—with the Spirit's help, of course—and work them out through a process of repentance and submission. Free will is a necessary precondition in that process, but not the end result." These two show how Arminians are different from Calvinists both in how they view salvation and in how they view sanctification. Both an Arminian and a Calvinist can say that if x is good, I choose x by the power of the Holy Spirit, whatever x is, but they mean different things by it, at least as regards salvation (and, I would argue, therefore sanctification). The Calvinist means that the Holy Spirit is both the necessary and sufficient cause of my choosing x. The Arminian means that the Holy Spirit is a necessary cause of my choosing x, but not sufficient, as is my own freely willing to choose x, and that only together are they a (the, since they are both necessary) sufficient cause of my choosing x.

The Arminian says that I freely choose salvation, I agree. I merely argue that I would never have chosen it apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Arminians agree. The part that I argue for that Arminians disagree with is that the Holy Spirit working in me for my salvation is what causes me to freely choose salvation. The problem being, so far as I can see, that an act necessitated solely by what is outside of me is not my free act. If it is mine, it is not free, and if it is free, then it is not mine. There is a sense in which I can agree with the objection, but not that it is a valid objection. I believe that the Holy Spirit causing me to choose salvation takes the form of the Holy Spirit causing me to desire salvation to the point that my desire for it, for God, overrules any objecting desires for earthly safety or happiness, and that I, because my desire for salvation is so strong, choose it based on my desire that has been caused by the Holy Spirit. I say that this act is free because it is an act caused--necessitated--by my will, which is to say, the strength of my desire for it being greater than the strength of my desire for not-it.

I claim that there is no causal path that cannot be traced back to God, but the Arminian seems to believe that some causal paths, while partially traceable to God, may be traced back to a different first cause, i.e., the will of a human. Not to say that the cause is not caused, but that the cause was not caused to be what it is, apart from, generally, a will. To make sense of this with respect to God, I argued that God must be in some sense atemporal, such that he might be the cause of his being how he is. This option is not open with regard to humans, yet the Arminians still seem to be arguing that we cause ourselves to have the sort of wills that we have. But what caused our will to cause itself to make itself the way that it now is? It must have had an original state, which must have been caused to be that way for some reason, and if there was the possibility for it to cause itself to change in some way other than it did, then it would seem it is still called upon to cause itself to be a certain kind of will, the kind that changes itself in this way or that way.

Thus it seems to me that the Arminians are forced to throw away the principal of sufficient reason, which says that for any state of affairs there must be a reason that it is this way and not some other. However, to do this is to throw away the basis of the cosmological argument for the existence of God, which seems to me to be the strongest argument we have. It also means we have no reason to ask why the world exists, or why the physical laws are as they are. Indeed we can no longer look at an action and be sure that there was a cause for it. A book falls, why must I look for gravity? Why can't I say "Books just do that, why should there be a cause?" Of course, Arminians may be able to say that the principle of sufficient reason applies wherever there are not free willed beings, but then why did we begin to study the social sciences with the perspective of science? Not that we cannot do so, necessarily, of we are free willed, but we have no reason to go looking for any tendencies. Perhaps, then, we are like quanta, very random at low levels, but when we get to a macro scale, it all evens out. But how is it that our actions being random is any better for calling our actions our own than determinism? I'm sorry, you rolled a 6 three times in a row, that is punishable with hell. What? Why? Is there no cause to expect consistency? Oh, each person starts out totally libertarianly free, but they lose that over time. Oh, so I roll the dice all at the start. Fine, at least we have consistency, but now I'm lost ahead of time again, why not from the very beginning? Besides, if it is random, then why does that not mean that God is in charge of it? He determines every outcome of the dice, why not all the other random things? But if the soul is random, then the soul is determined by God.

Transcendence and Immanence: Salvation

First, in this post, there is small piece showing how God's omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience follow from what has been said before. The rest, i.e., most, of this post is working from the transcendence/immanence differentiation that I spoke of before, and suggesting a view of God that is (I hope) in some ways consistent with both Calvinist and Arminian language.
 
In previous posts I have suggested that God is beyond time and that he created all that exists. I have also suggested that causing a thing to begin to be and causing a thing to continue to be are identical from a perspective outside of time. The other thing I have suggested, that will come up in this post, is that God is both inside of and outside of time, similar to air being both inside of and outside of a room.

First

From his creating all that is, it follows that he has the power to do whatever he wants to do with all things, for it would be as simple as removing a thing and placing in its stead another thing identical in all respects but that which he chooses to change. It also follows that there is at least a sense in which he is everywhere, since he must act on all things in order to keep them existent. He must also know all things, for he made all that is. All things were made from the outflow of his attributes, thus all truth is in his being. Thus, he has the attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.

Most

Transcendent/Immanent

Now, as God is outside of time, when he creates, what he creates is not created at a specific point in time, but rather, it spans a duration, all of which is created equally and simultaneously, as it were, by God. Each event, each decision, each change in position of each atom, everything is created as it is at each point in time by God. His causation of the world, both in its beginning and in each moment afterwards, are, in a sense, one and the same act of creation. Our prayers and our good works and even our sins only exist by his creative power. (I will deal with morality in the next post so as to show how God may yet be not the author of sin, and therefore still holy)

Yet God is within time. Time cannot keep God out of the world, indeed, if it did then all within it would cease to be, for without God's sustaining power all things cease to exist. Thus God, being in time, reacts to and is affected by his creation. Creation must therefore be orderly, and God must not be impassive to what occurs in creation, but react according to what occurs.

When God, outside of time, creates the world in all its moments, he therefore also creates it with his reactions to our movements. Those movements were created by God, however, and therefore he is not affected except in such ways as are according to his will. As he is in time, though, he reacts to our movements, yet his nature is not altered by our actions, but what he does because of his nature is different because the circumstances are.

Calvinism and Arminianism

Thus, as God is outside of time, he has predestined some to salvation, and some to damnation. God as in time, however, must be seen as reacting to our decisions, i.e., those who accept him are saved, and those who do not are damned. Yet God has, in his being outside of time, chosen some to be saved, some to be damned. At the same time, so to speak, he has opened salvation to any who would receive it, for in time there is a sense in which the salvation and damnation of those who will be saved and damned has not yet happened, and so the offer is given to all without bias and all are able, in a sense, to respond to the call, for in the sense that God is in time he is not causing the future to be as it will be, though as he is outside of time, he is causing it to be as it will be, or is, tense-less verbs would be nice for this.

It must not be said that these are different parts or aspects of God. I suggested thinking of it earlier as akin to Christ's nature as wholly man and wholly God, but I am second guessing that suggestion now. It may be better to say that it is a matter of perspective. God is eternal. Yet God is also responsive. It is not that these are separate, but actually that they both are and do not hinder each other. From God's point of view it may well be that understanding his transcendence is all that there is to understand, and that it contains his immanence, or that the distinction is false from his perspective. From a human point of view, however, it is a useful way of holding these two attributes of God together. As we live, God will almost always appear to be primarily immanent, and inside time,largely because we are inside time. God being outside of time is not contradictory with the appearance of God as inside of time, and understanding that God is outside of time is a comfort for many, and provides courage because we know that the victory is won. At the same time, this conception allows for an emphasis on the responsibility of humans, yet without that responsibility in any way entailing any sort of lack of sovereignty in God.

A Picture of Salvation in Exodus 3

This is the chapter in which Moses gets derailed by God from his shepherding of sheep to shepherd Israel, i.e., the one with the burning bush. The event itself is not necessarily Moses' conversion, but I think it draws a fitting picture of what is going on in it.

First, there is the burning bush, then Moses sees it. He is the only one around to see it, we are explicitly told that "the angel of the LORD appeared to him," (verse 2) i.e., Moses. So the bush is specifically for Moses to see and, it would seem, for him to be drawn toward, which he does. Who wouldn't? I suppose someone with a phobia of fire, or bushes, might not have, but that misses the point. Here is a strange appearance that would draw crowds in that day, not having advanced special effects and pyrotechnics, and it is in the middle of nowhere. Moses does not appear to have been seeking God, and the bush appears to be there whether Moses wanted to find God or not. So Moses comes out, sees this amazing thing, and did what anyone in his place would do "And Moses said, 'I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.'" There may be a sense in which Moses could have not gone to see the burning bush, but if so, it is the same sense in which most people could not take a raise without any bad side effects (as having to move, etc., might be). In the same way, in salvation, the one who was lost--wandering the wilderness, not even, necessarily, wanting to see God--sees a great light, a strange glory, and, though it may feel like a choice, it is a choice with no question as to what they will choose.

Despite the unsurprising nature of Moses reaction to seeing the bush, the text says "When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, 'Moses, Moses!' And he said 'Here I am.'" So there does seem to be some sense in which God responds to our actions. This does not seem to me to be a difficult thing to resolve, although it seems worth its own post. In short, God is beyond of time, as the transcendent God, but this does not mean that he is not also in time. There is a sense in which he is God with us, and in that way he acts as is right for him to act given what has happened up to a point in time.

God then introduces himself to Moses. Verses 5 affirms God's holiness and verse 6 reminds that he is the same God as has been working to bring this people into being. Verses 7-9, then, express God's compassion on his people. In verse 10 God calls Moses, telling him what he now wants him to do. Moses has already come to God, he does not need to do this thing. Except that God is able to be the power for Moses to do it, as is shown in the following verses. This is similar to a Christian being saved. We are told to do things, but our power to do those things is entirely God's power. Thus, the response to sin is to seek that God would use his power "for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13)