The following are responses to comments posted by a blogger on 9/19/2013 on the SBCToday blog, http://sbctoday.com/2013/09/17/rev-ronnie-rogers-responds/ in response to an article entitled “Is Libertarian Free Will Eternal?” This one gets a little deep. The blogger is a knowledgeable Calvinist, and very forthright about Calvinism’s determinism. His comments about my post are emboldened.
You said, “It’s hard to believe that Pastor Rogers comments are being celebrated as so definitive. Here is one example of his mistaken logic:”
Then you quote me saying, “Whether one is a Calvinist or not, God being omniscient, He has always known who the elect were, and for anyone to deny that God always knew who would be saved seems beyond the pale of orthodoxy.”
Again, the essence of Calvinism is not the affirmation that God knows who will be saved (the elect), but rather that He unconditionally chose some to salvation and did everything necessary to predetermine that these unconditionally elect would freely choose to believe.”
The following statement is apparently your example of my faulty logic, “While affirming God’s infallible omniscience he denies that God has determined from eternity who is elected.”
You are correct in recognizing that I affirm “God’s infallible omniscience” (thank you), but you overstated your case by saying that “he denies that God has determined from eternity who is elected.” Actually, I affirm the very opposite in the words you cited earlier, “He has always known who the elect were and for anyone to deny that God always knew who would be saved seems beyond the pale of orthodoxy.” The only sense I can make of your conclusion is that your Calvinistic lenses have caused you to read an emphatic affirmation as a denial. Further, I can only suppose that your thinking allows only one option for denying Calvinism’s unconditional election and compatibilism, which is a denial of God’s sovereignty. Lastly, that I am beyond the pale of orthodoxy since orthodoxy affirms the omniscience of God and denial of such is heterodoxy.
This is unfortunate, breaks down communication, and is an egregious error in your representation of my statement. Remember, Calvinism is not Scripture. We may disagree about the Scripture, but a disagreement with Calvinism’s espoused doctrines and its lesser known entailments is not equivalent to a denial of Scripture. Rather, that conclusion emanates from your superimposition of Calvinism as the only lens through which to view my words, which actually both affirm God knows and determines.
Tomorrow would never come if God would not have determined that it comes; hence, nothing happens outside of God’s purview of knowledge and sovereign rule. Accordingly, the question is not whether God is sovereign in salvation, but rather what is the nature of His creation/salvation plan and the process by which the sovereign omniscient God accomplishes His plan. We may disagree on the option or process, but that does not actually demonstrate, in and of itself, a Brobdingnagian leap in logic tantamount to denying God’s determination. To wit, did He determine to create efficient causes with otherwise choice, or only those with an ability to freely choose a predetermined outcome? Therefore, I am actually denying Calvinism’s causal compatibilism, and there is no faulty logic or internal conflict between believing that God knows the elect from eternity and a denial of Calvinism. We believe election is conditional (by God’s design), which is neither faulty logic nor unbiblical. Further, we deny that the creation of compatibly free beings is the only way, best way, or more importantly, the way most obviously chosen by Him to accomplish His will as reflected in Scripture.
I want to briefly comment upon four concepts at the heart of our discussion, and I am painfully aware of how one may misconstrue or even misuse such brevity; however, in order to fairly respond to your comments, I take the risk.
Compatibilism (including soft compatibilism) argues that freedom and determinism are compatible. It argues that while there are determinative antecedents (God, nature, state of affairs, and/or various conditions within the being), the choice is free so long as it is what one desires and there are no external constraints. Since the present choosing is the result of determinative antecedents, and the previous choosing was the result of its determinative antecedents, ad infinitum, every choosing is a predetermined free choosing without a choice to do otherwise. This is true of any compatibly free being, whether it be man or God.
Incompatibilism (including soft libertarianism) believes that humans are created with incompatible free will. This means that humans can choose, within the range of choices, to act or refrain, and whatever they do in fact choose, they could have chosen otherwise. While choices are influenced, at times significantly so, by other factors, they are not determined by them. This is true of any incompatibly free being whether it be man or God. Of course, the range of choices available to God is vast in comparison to that of man’s fluctuating range. Lastly, man being so endowed does not exclude God overriding man’s will if He desires. (See my original article that spawned this discussion, Man Both Righteous and Free 9/13/13)
Divine Knowledge: First, knowing does not entail causation even certain knowledge does not. To conclude that it does seems to be a confusion of categories. God always knows all. Consequently, foreknowledge is a helper word for us, but God knows the future, past, and present at the same instance and equally comprehensively. He always knows every actuality and potentiality along with perfect comprehensive conditional knowledge. He chooses to actualize certain potentialities out of an unknown number of potentialities that He could actualize, but that does not lead to compatibilism.
Consequently, the totality of knowledge of anything that has, does, or ever will exist or existed in the person of God; hence, no one had to do anything for God to know what would happen, and God had to look no further than Himself to know everything that either could or would be. He chose the perfect plan to accomplish His purpose, which you believe to be compatibilism. We believe the Scripture lucidly and compellingly teaches that He purposed to create beings with otherwise choice, as He Himself is, i.e. in His image.
Further, God’s choice, or the idea of choice, is not merely something we “anthropomorphically refer to as His choice” (your words). That is to say, it is not an anthropomorphic accommodation to explain the inevitable march of causal compatible determinism in God or man. It is an actual choice of God, and He could have chosen otherwise. Whether one recognizes it or not, this is at the crux of discussions such as ours. Are God and man making choices that they could have chosen other than they did in fact choose (incompatibilism) or not (compatibilism)?
Predetermination: I see this logically and in Scripture in two ways; first, to predetermine to directly create a series of events, etc., that in sequence, time, actions, and result are all unalterable; second, to predetermine to directly create an environment that involves other aspects of God’s full nature and desire, like efficient secondary causes, which includes humans created in His image with otherwise choice. God exercises His free and sovereign will to create such, and according to His full nature and infinite exhaustive knowledge, He executes His ultimate will without having to resort to such a degrading concept as compatibilism (degrading because it implies that God is incapable of being sovereign over higher level beings). Neither the logical nor the biblical concept of predetermination necessitates nor is best explained by compatibilism; thereby, predetermining everything causally in order for God to accomplish His purpose. I believe that the Scripture ubiquitously demonstrates that God does not actually predetermine people (Adam and Eve, Israel, the lost, etc.) to do the opposite of what He repeatedly commands and encourages them to do.
You said, “First, consider that in eternity nothing existed except for God. Omniscience requires that God knew perfectly what He, as God, should do and what ultimate purpose His actions should accomplish. He also knew exactly how to act to best accomplish this purpose.”
Of course, if God is a compatibly free being then He really has only one option, and that is what you seem to be proposing (consistent with compatibilism), something I reject. I would say God knew what He could do, what He desired to do by employing all at His disposal, and then decided what He would do. His purpose would be decided by Him. He would work perfectly to accomplish that end. Consequently, the question is what did He desire to do in order to bring Him glory and put His full character on display? Did He choose to create beings controlled by natures that lead inviolably to freely choosing sin; followed by selecting to forcibly regenerate a group thereby leading them to an equally inviolable and preordained free decision? Or is He capable of demonstrating His love, sovereignty, holiness, mercy, omniscience, omnipotence, wrath, and grace by accomplishing His will through creating beings with otherwise choice? The Scripture seems very clear that it is the latter. Regardless of your belief that Calvinism provides the best framework for understanding the perplexities of Scripture, you should be able to see that there is nothing illogical about God knowing the elect, and predetermining to incorporate and comprehend otherwise choice in that plan if He so chooses.
You said, “Creation in general declares His glory (Ps.19:1), and when considering salvation specifically He is glorified in both His calling and mercy on the elect (Eph.1:11-12, 14; 1Cor. 1:30-31).”
For the sake of brevity, let me say that I believe all of the Scriptures you cited. I believe that “we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). The question that we disagree on is, does predestination entail causal determination, or could God have had a choice between causal determination and otherwise choice, and have chosen the latter? That is to say, what is the way that He decided to accomplish His purpose? Frankly, without Calvinistic spectacles, there is nothing in what I have said that is contrary to the verses that you cited, and they neither logically nor hermeneutically inexorably lead only to Calvinism (although Calvinists believe their interpretation is the better of the two).
You said, “No other world could have been created because God’s perfect knowledge dictated this one:”
This seems at best exaggeratedly ambitious and at worst very disparaging to God. It seems to limit Him to having only one option (He has a compatible free will). Therefore, what He did in fact choose to do is the only thing that He could do, which is consistent with your unproven compatibilism. Of course, I reject that presupposition; such rejection only seems illogical when one superimposes compatibilism as the only viable assumption, but as a matter of logic or Scripture, it is not illogical.
You said, “Remember though, God knew perfectly how He would create, what His subsequent actions within His creation would be, and every repercussion of His actions from eternity. It is this perfect eternal knowledge that we anthropomorphically* refer to as His “choice” that determines who the elect are.”
If you are saying that God knew out of a range of options that He had as a sovereign incompatible free being, then I agree. If you are arguing compatibilism that is consistent with Calvinism, I do not agree, and it is not illogical to disagree with Calvinism or compatibilism. I may be right or wrong (as you may be as well), but to disagree with your argument is not illogical. I actually believe your deterministic view degrades God’s sovereignty and complete nature; although, that is clearly not your intent.
You said, “Consider that all internal and external factors that could possibly play into our free choices are causally traced back to God, and He knowingly brought them about. The compatiblistic freedom of Calvinism is the only view of human freedom that is both scriptural and logical, libertarian freedom is neither.”
Again, one of the greatest weaknesses of Calvinism is its inability to see God as wise and powerful enough to be sovereign over created beings that He sovereignly and decidedly freely chose to endow with otherwise choice; then, to actually employ such otherwise choice in His redemptive plan. In this statement you have stated the essence of Calvinism well, and I appreciate your forthrightness. I hope that everyone will take note. Unfortunately, many Calvinists and non-Calvinists who interact with Calvinism are unaware of how deterministic Calvinism really is.
You said, “Any attempt to claim that God’s eternal knowledge was determined by our supposed libertarian free wills is claiming that an effect that did not exist caused its own eternal cause which is logically impossible. So I believe it is clear that Pastor Rogers claim that it is true that God is both omniscient and did not determine who is elected is an affirmation of two mutually exclusive ideas that cannot both be true in reality.”
As clarified above, eternal knowledge is neither determined nor enhanced by anything outside of God at any point in eternity or in the time and space continuum. This includes the unfolding of events at a subsequent instance in eternity. Nor is the chronology of events in time and space determining or increasing anything in God. While He distinguishes between the sequences of events, He is not informed by them. Rather, the simple biblically consistent understanding is that God determined within Himself to create a world where He sovereignly endowed man with a choice between accessible options; wherein man would choose sin, and God, corresponding to who He is, would choose to grace-enable man to have the ability to choose to accept the good news of the gospel or not, which choice results in man either being saved or not as determined by God’s plan. Consequently, salvation did not depend upon God looking through the corridors of time to see what man would do.
All of this was freely and sovereignly comprehended in His coextensive creation/redemption plan that operates according to the counsel of His own will. Rather than being illogical, I would say that it actually pedestals all of the attributes of God consistently by demonstrating that God is, in everything and every instance, sovereign, holy, perfect love and mercy. Those who by grace through faith accept His wondrous grace and mercy experience His eternal love and those and those who do not suffer His eternal wrath.
If God sovereignly decides within Himself to make salvation conditional, comprehending in His plan all that would involve, then all talk of non-Calvinistic salvation depending upon man, being illogical, challenging God’s sovereignty, being of works, etc., etc., is without merit.
