The standard belief in Calvinism is that God endowed humanity with compatible moral freedom (or other equally deterministic views, such as synchronic contingency, as in Richard Muller) rather than with libertarian freedom, as Extensivists believe (those who reject Calvinism). [1] There are many problems related to this belief, but an ever-present one is that it entails God desiring man to freely choose to sin. That is to say, while it leaves man as the proximate cause of sin, it leaves God as the ultimate cause of sin. Let me define these two views.
Compatibilism: Determinism and moral responsibility are compatible, hence the name. This compatibility is not achieved by compatibilism being less deterministic than hard determinism. Rather, it is achieved by defining free choice to mean as long as a person chooses according to his greatest desire, he can be considered to have made a free choice for which he is morally responsible, even though, given the same past, he cannot choose differently in the moral moment of decision.
Consequently, the difference between compatibilism (soft determinism) and hard determinism is not to be found in the levels of the deterministic nature of each because they are the same. Rather, the difference is compatibilism contends people are morally responsible if they choose according to their greatest desire, and hard determinism says they are not.[2] Therefore, moral responsibility is the product of defining free choice as a person choosing according to his greatest desire even though the desire is determined. Often, Calvinists affirm soft determinism and disavow hard determinism because they think soft is not as unflinchingly deterministic as hard; that is a misunderstanding of compatibilism.
Libertarianism: Man is not determined. He has the actual ability to choose between accessible options, at least in some scenarios. Libertarians contend that determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility. Man possesses actual otherwise choice and can, therefore, act or refrain in the moral moment of decision within a given range of options, given the same past, in some scenarios. Extensivism contends that God endowed man with this ability, which is an aspect of being created in the image of God. God determines the range of options. Adam’s range of options before the fall, the result of creative grace, was greater than humanity’s range of options after the fall. This actual otherwise choice makes man both the proximate and ultimate cause of sin since God created man so that he could choose not to sin and desired that he would so choose.
Man’s ability to have chosen, in the moral moment of sin, to not sin means sin is the result of man’s misuse of his freedom, which God did not desire but did comprehend in his plan. It may very well be, and I think it is, that one cannot create a libertarian free human being with the option to sin and guarantee he will not misuse his freedom.[3] However, Scripture teaches us God overcomes this dilemma through his coextensive creation-redemption plan.
Some Calvinists seek to avoid the dilemma created by their commitment to compatibilism by arguing that God created Adam and Eve with libertarian free will (the ability to choose to eat of the tree or refrain), and man only became compatibly free (unable to choose to act or refrain in the moral moment of decision, given the same past) after the fall. This assertion fails because it treats moral freedom as extraneous to the nature of man when, in fact, it is intrinsic to the nature of man as man. God endowing man with moral freedom is not the same as God putting a coat on man, then taking it off and putting on a different coat, leaving humanity unchanged.
Rather, God created man with the kind of moral freedom that is essential to what it means to be human. To propose a change in this essential component from pre-fall to post-fall man is to change the very nature of man. This is to the point that the man who fell in the garden is not the same (essentially) as mankind after the fall; to wit, you may classify the being before the fall as human, or you can classify the being after the fall as human, but they both cannot be so classified since they are essentially dissimilar.
Let me clarify. Two things can have dissimilarities and be the same, whereas essential dissimilarities between them mean they can only be similar; they cannot be the same. For example, you and I can both be humans (the same beings), even though we may be dissimilar in various ways (male, female, tall, short .etc.); we still share humanness, created in the image of God. In contrast, a chimpanzee can be similar to a human (some abilities and physical characteristics), but a chimpanzee cannot be a human being because we are essentially dissimilar; they are not created in the image of God. In like manner, the dissimilarity between a being possessing a compatible moral nature and a libertarian moral nature is an essential dissimilarity; therefore, a change in the nature of man’s moral freedom entails that the person before the fall is categorically, essentially, not the same person with a different moral freedom after the fall.
In other words, we can understand one of them as being human but not both of them since their natures are essentially mutually exclusive. The significance of such a change in essentially dissimilar moral capacities further means the ones God is redeeming are not essentially the same beings as the ones who sinned in the garden; therefore, the biblical and logical result of this line of thinking is that God’s salvation plan is a failure.
To say it differently, Calvinists’ attempt to invoke libertarian freedom for Adam and Eve in order to extricate God from being the ultimate cause of sin (as demanded by compatible freedom) fails. Because this would mean God did not offer salvation to the original Adam and Eve, who actually sinned, nor is he offering it to their actual offspring, those created in the image of God with otherwise choice. Rather, God is only offering salvation to an ersatz (imitation) Adam and Eve and an ersatz offspring of Adam and Eve rather than his original creation and their offspring, indicating that neither Adam and Eve nor their actual offspring are savable.
Therefore, either God created Adam and Eve with libertarian freedom, which they maintained after the fall, or he created them with compatible freedom, which they maintained after the fall. One may believe either, but one cannot mix the two. If one believes they were endowed with compatible moral freedom, it necessarily means God predetermined and desired for Adam and Eve to freely and unavoidably choose to sin. Their choice to sin means they were the proximate cause of sin, and their choice was a free choice according to their greatest desire; it also entails that their past given by God predetermined their desire from which they freely chose to sin; therefore, God is the ultimate cause of sin. And sadly, Calvinists have no choice in whether their sin will be forgiven because, in this belief system, only God chooses who to save and who to damn to eternal torment.
Even though Calvinists often invoke libertarian freedom or speak libertarianly when their commitment to compatibilism leaves them in the gulag of contradictions and ineluctable entailments, it is biblically and intellectually untenable to do so.
[1] Generally, I use Extensivism as a positive term in place of non-Calvinism. Particularly, I define Extensivism in the following way: The belief that man was created in the image of God with otherwise choice and that God’s salvation plan is comprehensive, involving an all-inclusive unconditional offer of salvation and eternal security of the believer; reception of which is conditioned upon grace-enabled faith rather than an exclusive plan involving a limited actual offer of salvation to only the unconditionally elected, or any plan that, in any way, conditions salvation upon merely a humanly-generated faith.
[2] Some hard determinists may argue for moral responsibility, but that really changes hard determinism into soft determinism, compatibilism.
[3] This seems to be the consensus of the philosophical writings I have read on the subject. I am not aware of any who cogently argue it is possible.
