Calvinists unsuccessfully seek to harmonize their commitment to compatibilism and decretal theology, the presence of sin, and God’s lack of culpability in the following three ways.
First, Calvinists argue that God does not cause evil and that he relates to good and evil asymmetrically, differently. Calvinist D.A. Carson writes, “I alone am responsible for that sin . . . God is not to be blamed. But if I do good . . . God’s grace has been manifest in my case, and he is to be praised. If this sounds just a bit too convenient for God, my initial response . . . is that according to the Bible this is the only God there is. There is no other.”[1]
I agree it is indeed the biblical position that God does not cause sin. I would also contend that he does not even desire sin in those he created (beyond the desire to permit man the freedom to choose between good and evil, and even in this freedom, he desired all humanity to choose righteousness ). The problem is that this clear biblical teaching is hopelessly inconsistent with Calvinism because of Calvinism’s commitment to compatibilism. Compatible moral freedom means that man is considered to choose freely as long as he chooses according to his greatest desire. It equally entails that man’s greatest desire is the result of determinative antecedents.
This means that in the moral moment of decision, man is considered to make a free decision if he chooses according to his greatest desire; however, he could not have chosen differently than he did, because his past determines his greatest desire. For example, Adam chose to sin freely and was therefore responsible for his sin (according to compatibilism). However, given compatibilism, he could not have chosen not to sin since compatibilism entails that his past—nature—predetermined the greatest desire from which Adam freely chose to eat of the tree; therefore, his free choice to sin was unalterable given his past, and therefore a determined free choice.
Thus, in Calvinism, via compatibilism, Adam is responsible for his choice. But God is responsible for his past and nature from which the determined desire emanated that determined the free choice Adam would make; this is true of every preceding choice he made as well. When one continues to trace Adam’s past to its beginning, it leads to God. As a result, while Adam is said to be responsible for his sin (proximate cause), God is the one who is ultimately responsible for Adam choosing to sin.
Although Adam’s decision was a free decision reflective of his greatest desire, according to compatibilism’s definition of such, he is not the originator of his past from which the desire emanated because that is from God.[2] According to compatibilism, had God not desired for Adam to sin, he would have created him with a different nature and past. Therefore, compatibilism may accomplish leaving man proximately responsible for his sin, but it leaves God being ultimately responsible, which problem libertarian freedom avoids.
Libertarian freedom means that God created man with otherwise choice; to wit, in some circumstances, he can act or refrain in the moral moment of decision, and whatever he does choose, he could have chosen differently. Therefore, given libertarian freedom as Extensivists (non-Calvinists) believe, Adam freely chose to sin, but in the moral moment of decision, he should have and could have chosen differently, which is precisely what God desired for him to do.
Second, Calvinists seek to exculpate God for sin by the employment of secondary causes. The use of secondary causes is often referred to separately, but it is a component of understanding God to be related to sin and good asymmetrically. Often, when I bring up given compatibilism, God’s culpability in sin, Calvinists will quickly respond that he is not because God employs secondary causes. The employment of secondary causation is supposed to be accepted as absolving God from causing sin or evil, but it only really accomplishes removing God from being the proximate cause of sin, which is not my point.
D.A. Carson attempts to distance God from being responsible for sin by saying, “If compatibilism is true and if God is good . . . then it must be the case that God stands behind good and evil in somewhat different ways. . . . To put it bluntly, God stands behind evil in such a way that not even evil takes place outside the bounds of his sovereignty, yet the evil is not morally chargeable to him: it is always chargeable to secondary agents, to secondary causes . . . In other words, if I sin, I cannot possibly do so outside of the bounds of God’s sovereignty . . . but I alone am responsible for that sin . . . God is not to be blamed.”[3]
Carson is correct to recognize that man “alone is responsible for . . . sin.” Nevertheless, his recognition and assertion of this biblical truth fail to establish how such is the case, ultimately speaking, if compatibilism is true. If compatibilism is true, as Carson believes, the best that can be hoped for is that man is justifiably and proximately responsible for sin, but it also just as assuredly leaves God being ultimately responsible. The reliance upon secondary causation to exonerate God is only successful in a libertarian scenario where man is the efficient cause (has full agent causation) with the actual ability to have chosen differently than he did in the moral moment of decision. That is not the case with compatibilism.
Thus, the inescapable truth of Calvinism is that God could have prevented all sin from entering the universe, and while God may not be the proximate cause—or direct cause—he inescapably causally desired sin to exist, and therefore, sin exists. This inescapable conclusion is because within a compatible system of freedom, reliance upon secondary, or even tertiary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary causes fails to palliate or remove the fact that God by free choice ultimately determined the determinative antecedents that unalterably produced man’s greatest desire to sin from which man chose to sin; therefore, God is ultimately responsible for man’s choice to sin, which could have been different had such pleased him.
Since compatibilism means that man is considered to make a free moral choice as long as he chooses according to his greatest desire, and his desires are the result of determinative antecedents, all God had to do was create man with a different past and nature, and man would never have sinned.
Therefore, God desired all the horrors of sin, rebellion against him, untold ghastly violence, dreadful death, and the drowning sea of tears deluging the lives and homes of his creation. Such desire is not satisfactorily explained by resorting to his permissive will because the activities of his permissive will are as determined in Calvinism as any other aspect of his will, given decretal theology and compatibilism.
Third, they speak libertarianly as needed. I have found it impossible to find Calvinists who consistently speak, write, pray, and think in line with their chosen compatible moral freedom (or similar exhaustively determinist models, such as synchronic contingency, see Divine Will and Human Choice, Richard A. Muller), although some are more consistent than others. I conclude this after reading Calvinist theology, commentaries, and articles, or talking and listening to them regarding Scripture and life for over forty-five years; this time period includes my long-time commitment to Calvinism, during which I regrettably exhibited the same inconsistency.
The reasons Calvinists speak and think libertarianly seem to be threefold. One, many Calvinists are simply unaware of the inescapable micro-determinism inherent in true Calvinism; they think it only relates to certain components of God’s plan, rather than every thought and act of man, including what one thinks of this article. Two, it seems impossible to live consistently, think, talk, pray, relate to others, and interpret all Scripture in a deterministically compatible style. This reality means that no matter how hard a determinist seeks to live out determinism, they cannot, at least I have never heard of one who does. Such an inability should make one seriously evaluate the reliability of any system of interpretation of Scripture, life, or thought premised on determinism; it did for me.
Three, the deterministic nature of compatibilism is often intentionally elided by some to harmonize Calvinism with Scripture’s ubiquitous portraits of man possessing free will. The attempted lessening of the deterministic nature of compatibilism and decretal theology, when needed, is deemed to present a gentler Calvinism. This gentler Calvinism seeks to absolve God of culpability for sin, while permitting the Calvinist to show compassion to those who are hurting due to tragedy and discuss Scripture, life, and the world in a way that makes sense. Because, true consistent Calvinism means that people suffer because it pleases God for them to suffer, as evidenced by the fact that he ultimately caused (not just permitted) the suffering, when he did not have to.
This type of artificial decoration makes a true comparison of Extensivism and Calvinism extraordinarily difficult because it masks the micro-determinism of Calvinism. Those who minimize the unflinching determinism of Calvinism are viewed as embracing and exemplifying a gentler Calvinism; however, the reality is that the gentler they appear, the more inconsistent they are with Calvinism’s irreducible tenets.
A part of painting this gentler portrait of Calvinism is done by noting that compatibilism is known as soft determinism in contrast with hard determinism; however, compatibilism is considered to be softer, not because it is less deterministic than hard determinism, but because it says a person is morally responsible if he chooses according to his greatest desire. Compatibilism does not, in any sense, permit a compatibilist to respond to verses, talk, pray, or live as though a man should not do certain things and should do other things in which he can actually choose to do otherwise. Even the idea of regret makes no sense in Calvinism’s determinism, since the very concept of regret implies that the person chose wrongly and should have, and could have, chosen otherwise.
In the end, once a person navigates all of Calvinism’s insufficient answers to the problem of God’s holiness and the presence of sin, given a compatible moral state of affairs, we are left with this: man is the proximate cause of sin, but God is the ultimate cause of every sin. He does not merely allow sin (which is only possible in a libertarian moral world), but he actually causes it through direct or indirect levels of causation. However, multiple causes do not remove the reality that God is the ultimate cause and, therefore, has ultimate responsibility because each is equally and unalterably caused by God alone.
That God is the ultimate cause of everything, including every evil and sin, is the inescapable reality of Calvinism, even though not all who don the label Calvinist fully understand compatibilism, and most (if not all) do not consistently adhere to its unflinching determinism. Certainly, virtually no one lives and talks in a way that everyone understands the micro-determinism of Calvinism, with its compatible view of moral freedom.
[1] D.A. Carson, How Long O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1990, 2006), 189.
[2] This is not to say that Adam’s decisions were not a part of his determinative past because they were, but each of them was also as determined as was every other part of his past.
[3] D.A. Carson, How Long O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1990, 2006), 189.
