Calvinism

[atheos_sum]

BenK:

Now we’re speaking two fundamentally different languages. How is ‘God’s trancendence of time allows for both free will and divine omniscience’ an affirmation of the doctrine of double predestination?

You can drop that question. I misread what you wrote.

BenK:

God knows what Smith chooses because God is present in the moment that Smith makes the choice. Unless Smith makes the choice, God cannot know what Smith chooses, because Smith doesn’t choose.

Well, this isn’t very difficult to respond to. If God does not have knowledge of Smith’s salvation, it simply doesn’t obtain. It doesn’t seem like you see the connection between absolute knowledge and what actually obtains–the two are inseparable.

But furthermore, Grace is a gift from God, and no human action can in any way be the cause of grace being bestowed upon them. You cannot influence the deity in such a way as to be the cause of your own salvation.

BenK:

Likewise, God doesn’t know whether Smith responds to Jones’ preaching if Jones doesn’t preach to Smith.

How can an omniscient deity see the world in iffy scenarios like you are describing? An omniscient deity would have no need for conditional truth tables (i.e. “If, Then” scenarios) because his knowledge would pierce through falsity and behold only what is actual.

God knows whether Jones preaches to Smith and also whether Smith responds to Jone’s preaching. Anything short of that would not constitute ultimate foreknowledge.

BenK:

Omniscience means to know everything that is, not to know things that are not.

Omniscience comes from omnia “all” and “scire” to know: to know all.

By logical extension, if one know all things that are actual (or obtaining), it follows that one would also know what things are not actual (or not obtaining). If I know that only P = Q, then I can deduce that R (which is not a P) does not equal Q. Everything that acts is actual, and if God knows what is actual–which an omniscient deity must–then anything which doesn’t act is not actual, and he knows this to be the case.

BenK:

Furthermore a ‘choice’ as I experience it is only a ‘free’ choice in the moment that I make it. A choice that is, from my point of view, in the past is not free because I cannot change it. A choice that is from my point of view in the future is simply a random, unknown quantity that I have no direct control over. But in the present moment, a choice is genuinely a choice, an opportunity for me to enact for good or ill, an act of creation within the context and limits of God’s creation. Choice qua choice exists only in the present.

I am asserting that all moments are present to God.

This is consistent with what I’m saying. God is not bound by time. But to say that all moments are present to Him and somehow implying that this equals free will for human beings is not sufficient.

Take these three innocuous premises.

1)God created the universe
2) the universe had a beginning
3) God did not have beginning because God is eternal

Although it is a paradox to say “the time before time itself,” there is something important in that notion. It’s not actually “before” in a chronological sense, but it is a separate state of existence—a primary state of existence. If it does not make sense to talk about God’s primary state of existence then one is implying that the universe is as eternal as God Himself is. And if God and the universe co-existed for eternity then God could not have created the universe—which by the way might be fairly defensible philosophically but probably not theologically.

Anyway, this doesn’t have to be very complicated. If you agree that the universe is not eternal, then at this (primary state?) there was only God and no universe. We should just call it the primordial state (or PS if you want) to lessen the confusion.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Edwin,

It is impossible to say what Calvin really believed, since he was a poor theologian whose writings are full of contradiction.

If Calvin were alive today, there are several questions that I would like to ask him. One question being this: Was it God’s will for Adam and Eve to be disobedient to his expressed will that they were not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? It seems to me that Calvinist theology collapses in on itself when trying to give a straight answer to this question.

If one asserts, (as a Calvinist must do), that it was God’s will that Adam and Eve were to be disobedient to God’s expressed will that they were to avoid eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then God’s will is confused and opposed to itself - i.e. it is God’s will for Adam and Eve to be both disobedient and obedient to what he has commanded. And if God’s will is confused and contradictory, why was Adam and Eve’s non-free act of disobedience the reality that came into existence? Why wasn’t Adam and Eve’s obedience the reality that came to be? If one is willing to overlook the sheer irrationality of believing that God’s will is opposed to God’s will, the reality of Adam and Eve’s choice for disobedience would be proof that God’s will for disobedience is the more powerful part of God’s confused will. Which means that the evil that is in God is greater than the good that is in God.

The only rational way to answer my question is to acknowledge that Adam and Eve did indeed have free will, and because they were not created in a condition of total depravity, that it is possible for creatures that were created good and holy to make choices that are against God’s expressed will. Which is why Lucifer could rebel against God’s will. Which also means that it is possible for fallen creatures that have been justified by the unmerited grace of God to exercise their free will in ways that are in opposition to God’s perfect will. IOW, it is possible in this world to lose one’s sanctified and justified state and be eternally damned by making the free choice for unrepentant disobedience to God.

this is an excellent post. this is basically what i’ve been thinking all along, but was having a little trouble putting into words. do you mind if i use some of this in a debate i’m having with a calvinist?

 

[atheos_sum]

Matt 16_18 and Rand Al’Thor,

There are so many Church teachings, such as Augustine’s “Predestination of the Saints,” which show that God foreknew and predestined lives of the saints and so on before the foundation of the world.

Let me ask you simply, if God predestined Adam and Eve to have children, which he must have for Jesus and Mary and the Saints to have lived, then this implies the supralapsarian doctrine that God by neccesity had predestined the Fall of Mankind in order for Adam and Eve to produce children and fulfill later events.

 

[BenK]

This is consistent with what I’m saying. God is not bound by time. But to say that all moments are present to Him and somehow implying that this equals free will for human beings is not sufficient.

Say what? Let’s not forget what we’re arguing about here. I never “implied” that all moments being present to God “equals” free will. You were asserting that omniscience precludes the possibility of free will. It doesn’t.

 

[Matt16_18]

Rand Al'Thor:

this is an excellent post. this is basically what i’ve been thinking all along, but was having a little trouble putting into words. do you mind if i use some of this in a debate i’m having with a calvinist?

Feel free if you think it will be useful.

 

[Matt16_18]

atheos_sum:

Let me ask you simply, if God predestined Adam and Eve to have children, which he must have for Jesus and Mary and the Saints to have lived, then this implies the supralapsarian doctrine that God by neccesity had predestined the Fall of Mankind in order for Adam and Eve to produce children and fulfill later events.

God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply before they were disobedient to his will. That means that Adam and Eve could have had children in Paradise without being willfully disobedient to God’s expressed will that they were to avoid eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

I believe that you are trying to evade the issue that I have raised. Can God’s will contradict God’s will? Was it God’s will for Adam and Eve to be both disobedient and obedient to what he had expressly commanded (i.e. that Adam and Eve were not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil)?

 

[atheos_sum]

BenK:

Say what? Let’s not forget what we’re arguing about here. I never “implied” that all moments being present to God “equals” free will.

if this is not your implication, then why is you answer “all moments are present to God” in response to any notion of predestination?What are you implying when you disagree with predestination then? You’re entire attempt to critique what I have been writing implies you are an advocate of free-will.

You are being too indirect and it appears you have dropped or ignored a lot of what I argue. The best way to attempt to refute an idea is by focusing on its central ideas. Why don’t you take a look at the premises and background I provided at the end of post 81?

BenK:

You were asserting that omniscience precludes the possibility of free will. It doesn’t.

You’re only half right.

It doesn’t follow solely from omniscience that human agents are predestined. I have already explained this thoroughly. If I am omniscient, it doesn’t mean I am the cause of the things I know. If I am ‘omniscience’ and ‘creator of all things’ combined, however, it is a different matter. It follows very logically that all the things which I created are predestined for certain outcomes.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Writer:

I was with you until the last paragraph… If I am catching your drift, you’re saying that, since God knows the future, we don’t have free will. To discount free will is to give the enemy a weapon he’d treasure like no other. It not only runs contrary to common theloogical sense, but it creates an environment where our actions don’t have consequences, and there is no responsibility for our moral choices. Fore-knowledge of an event does not infer that we are controlling the said event. I may know the end of a movie I am watching, but that doesn’t mean that my knowledge of the ending affects the outcome of the film. Yes, God knows whether you or I will be with Him in Heaven, but to egocentricaly declare yourself elected and thereby avoid responsibility for your behavior, seems to hang on a false premise that omniscience translates into having a direct affect upon all things to happen in the future. It also seems to betray an inconsistent grasp of the nature of time itself.

To be elected is not ego-centric - because election is not because of anything in the elect. Election, if accepted with the dispositions befitting it, is a reason for self-abasement, not for pride or boasting: both are excluded, for election is a gift of the Sovereign and All-gracious God. To treat it as a reason for self-exaltation, is to misunderstand its moral character completely: it was because so many of the great heroes of the Calvinist tradition knew that they were nothing at all, that they were so effective as men of God. Becoming a missionary to China, or preaching in England and the American colonies, is obedience to a Divine call, not a shirking of it.​

Besides, Calvin was very clear that God was to be glorified by the Christian in whatever vocation God had put the Christian in. This implies that Christians are responsible for the way they live.

Far from being a reason to avoid responsibility, it is a reason to be obedient to the One Who elects. ##

If our actions are indeed of so little consequence, then why is there such a great emphasis on doing good action in the Bible. As James reminds us, faith without action is dead. Action is the outward reflection of the faith within. Just like you can’t have a candle without light and warmth, you can’t have faith in a vacuum. We are to “work out our faith with fear and trembling”. While we can have a degree of personal assurance or certainty as to our eternal destination through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we are sadly mistaken if we believe that nothing we can do against God has the power to seperate us from His love in eternity. Actions, as a result of free will, always have the potential to place in the enemy’s camp, but we hold to God’s mercy that we will live accordingly and spend eternity with Him.

A possible answer: our deeds matter, but they are not meritorious - God has prepared good works for us to walk in; therefore, to do them is part of our obedience as children of God, following Him Who was always obedient to His Father’s Will, even to the death of the Cross.​

If God has elected us - how can we diselect ourselves ? Is man mightier than God ? ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Contarini:

It’s a false dichotomy. The mainstream of Western theology, as represented by theologians like Augustine and Aquinas, upholds free will while also teaching predestination “ante praevisa merita.”

How far is this different from predestination absque praevisa merita ? Predestination “before (or “before”) foreseen merits”, does seem to be not quite the same as a predestination which is apart from them entirely.​

As St. Thomas puts it, God does not know things because they happen; they happen because God knows them. God’s knowledge is the cause of the things it knows. “Free will” thus does not imply indeterminacy with regard to divine action.

I have serious problems with this view. But it does no good to pretend that Augustine and Aquinas did not teach this, or to explain away the difficulties involved in any alternative.

For Aquinas, the view you’re maintaining is unworthy of God, because it makes creatures the cause of something in God.

Which is where an insistence on the Sovereignty of God is strong. The - or a - difficulty with an insistence on Divine Sovereignty, is that the “problem of evil” is harder to “account for”.​

OTOH, maybe that is exactly the point - perhaps it is a blunder to try to give a rational account of something which is so entirely irrational. Perhaps the attempt to do so, implies that evil is being given the same sort of status as things which are real things: because evil is a parasite on what is real; not a real thing. ##

Edwin

 

[BenK]

if this is not your implication, then why is you answer “all moments are present to God” in response to any notion of predestination?

You are arguing that a belief in an omniscient creator was incompatible with a belief in free human agents. I assert that these two propositions are only incompatible if we hold to a naive view of time and God’s relationship to time.

I’m not arguing “that all moments are present to Him and somehow implying that this equals free will for human beings”. It doesn’t logically follow from the fact that God trancends time that humans are free agents, but to refute your position, I don’t have to show that. I only have to show that it doesn’t follow from ‘God is omniscient’ and ‘God created everything’ that humans have no free agency.

In any case, your argument as it stands is scattered over several posts and more often than not, I can’t see how the particular points you make contribute to your conclusion. So lay it out as a formal deduction. Start with

1. God is omniscient.
2. God created the universe.

and deduce from these premises that humans cannot have free will.

 

[BenK]

“OTOH, maybe that is exactly the point - perhaps it is a blunder to try to give a rational account of something which is so entirely irrational. Perhaps the attempt to do so, implies that evil is being given the same sort of status as things which are real things: because evil is a parasite on what is real; not a real thing.”

Evil is not a real thing. Monkey turd. The belief that the evil involved in, say, the rape of a small boy is ‘not a real thing’, and more revoltingly the belief that God preordains that rape, to his glory and for his good pleasure, is as far from Christian orthodoxy as any doctrine I can imagine.

I’m all for unity in the church of christ, but some heresies deserve the stake.

 

[Trelow]

This is your brain:

This is your brain on Calvinism: :whacky:

Any questions?

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

“OTOH, maybe that is exactly the point - perhaps it is a blunder to try to give a rational account of something which is so entirely irrational. Perhaps the attempt to do so, implies that evil is being given the same sort of status as things which are real things: because evil is a parasite on what is real; not a real thing.”

Evil is not a real thing. Monkey turd. The belief that the evil involved in, say, the rape of a small boy is ‘not a real thing’, and more revoltingly the belief that God preordains that rape, to his glory and for his good pleasure, is as far from Christian orthodoxy as any doctrine I can imagine.

I’m all for unity in the church of christ, but some heresies deserve the stake.

Latter point first - you’re making me say what I did not say. Please don’t ​

First point - of course evil is not a real thing. It is something which does not itself exist at all - any more than being hungry exists in itself: the sensation of hunger exists only if there is a subject to feel that sensation. Apart from the sensing subject - such a man or a dog - this sensation is nothing but an abstraction.

So with evil: unless there is a good thing - and therefore, a thing of which reality can be predicated, given that “goodness” and “reality” are convertible terms - upon which evil can be parasitic, that evil is non-existent.

Child rape is an evil act, not because it is sexual, of course - sexuality is in itself a good, as is the human body - but because it involves the misuse of bodily and spiritual abilities: of things which are good in themselves, and intended for good. It is the misuse of things that are realities, not the addition of some other real thing to them called “evil”, that makes the act one of child rape, and therefore justifies the judgement that it is an evil act.

A knife is not evil - the human will is not evil - the human ability to hold certain objects is not evil. To stab someone to death, clearly is evil. But nothing is evil about the constituent parts of the act - the putting together of all those parts in such a way that another person is harmed, is what constitutes the evil; IOW, the evil lies in the maladaptation of those parts to each other - separate the parts, and there is neither the stabbing, nor the evil of so doing.

And the same holds for the evil of raping a child. The strength used to commit rape, is not evil; nor is the faculty of deciding to carry out an act. The evil is made of nothing but the wrong use of several things meant to be used in a very different way: but that evil, is not any of those things - therefore, it is not a real thing.

C.S. Lewis and Boethius - not to mention any more - are two expositors of this so-called heresy: to say that an evil is a real thing, in the same way as a good is a real thing, opens the way to strict dualism, in which Good and Evil are for ever at odds, neither defeating the other. That is definitely part-way to heresy.

To say that good and evil are both real, and in the same sense, so that evil is real in the same sense as good, makes God the Author of evil - for if He creates evil in precisely the same sense as He creates what is good, then He is as responsible for the sin of Lucifer as for the redemption of mankind. The massacre of the Jews in WW2 would then be as truly the Will of God as the conversion of St. Paul. So either Divine Goodness is what among us would be called evil, or, it bears no relation to anything we can recognise as good or as evil; or, God is amoral, and not bothered with righteousness or unrighteousness.

IOW, it is insisting that good and evil are both equally and fully real, and are so in the same way, that leads to moral abominations. For then one is left to conclude that child rape and infanticide are as acceptable to God as chastity and self-sacrificing charity. ##

 

[atheos_sum]

I have constructed these arguments in the hope that you will construct your own, based on your own axioms, to show that man is a free agent—if that is indeed what you purport.

1st argument

1.  God is eternal.

2.  Therefore God could not have had a beginning.

3.  God chose to create the universe (time, matter, energy, supernatural entities etc.)

4. Therefore the universe is not eternal and must have had a beginning.
5. Therefore there must have primary state (PS) in which only God and not the universe existed. If there is no (PS), this implies the universe is eternal, which we know not to be the case.

2nd argument, follows from axioms in 1st argument

1.  God is omniscient.

2.  God, being omniscient, cannot have false foreknowledge. God has no uncertainties about which he has foreknowledge of, which, of course, is everything.

3.  God, being omniscient, knew from the primary state (PS) the salvific consequences of every human being.

4. God, omniscient creator of the universe, determined the salvific consequence of every human being from the primary state (PS.)

This is the beating heart of the argument. But from these axioms one can discover doctrines of “limited atonement,” “irresistible grace,” “supralapsarianism,” “total depravity,” “unconditional election,” and “preservation,” and so on.

 

[Contarini]

Matt16_18:

I think that you misunderstand Aquinas, for it is clear that Aquinas believes that men have free will, and that free will is the cause of its own movement: I answer that, Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. … Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.

Whether man has free will?
IOW, God is the cause of man having free will, but man is the cause of moving his free will to the choice of evil instead of good.

No, Matt, God is not simply the cause of man having free will. God works in the voluntary agent (the human person) according to the nature He has bestowed. God is working in every act according to Aquinas. He does not simply cause human beings to have free will and then sit back and watch them act. See ST I, Question 22 Article 3, especially the response to Objection 2: “God’s immediate provision over everything does not exclude the action of secondary causes; which are the executors of His order, as was said above (19, 5, 8).” Aquinas explicitly believes that God’s providence extends to every individual thing, and that secondary causes are simply executing God’s order. Again, note the remark in Qu. 22, Art. 4, that providence does not fail to produce its effect. Aquinas’s denial of “necessity” is misleading here if you don’t read carefully.

I don’t see how you can defend your position in the light of Question 23, particularly Article 5. Aquinas explicitly says that God predestines some and reprobates others without regard to foreseen merits. He does not think that this contradicts free will Why do you think there was a Thomist/Molinist controversy? Precisely because Aquinas’s position was paradoxical and left a lot of questions to be answered, which the Thomists and Molinists addressed in mutually incompatible ways.

You also haven’t addressed the fact that Thomas says that God’s knowledge is causative. I’m afraid you are the one misunderstanding Thomas, taking his statements out of context and interpreting his affirmation of free will in terms of your own preconceptions about what that must involve.

Edwin

 

[Matt16_18]

Contarini:

No, Matt, God is not simply the cause of man having free will. God works in the voluntary agent (the human person) according to the nature He has bestowed.

I said that God is the cause of man having free will, which is true. I did not deny the doctrine of consequent grace.There is a supernatural influence of God in the faculties of the soul which coincides in time with man’s free act of will. (De fide)

In salutary acts God and man work together. God works “in us, with us” (in nobis nobiscum; cf. D 182), so that they are a cojoint work of God’s grace and man’s activity under the control of his will. …

Dr. Ludwig OTT, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

God is working in every act according to Aquinas.

The Church teaches that God and man work together in every salutary act. Show me where Aquinas taught that God and man are working together in evil acts.

Aquinas explicitly says that God predestines some and reprobates others without regard to foreseen merits.

The Thomists argue that they only believe in a negative reprobation of certain men on account of their forseen sins, and that they do not teach the positive reprobation of the Calvinists. But suppose that the differences between Aquinas’s negative reprobation and Calvin’s positive reprobation is really just a matter of semantics. That would only prove one thing, that Aquinas was wrong on this point. It would not prove that the Catholic Church teaches Calvinism, since not everything that Aquinas taught is the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church. This is what the Church actually teaches:**
Despite men’s sins God truly and earnestly desires the salvation of all men. (Sent. fide proxima).**

… The Church has rejected as heretical the limitation of the Divine will for salvation to the predestined by the Predestinarians, the Calvinists and the Jansenists …

Dr. Ludwig OTT, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

You also haven’t addressed the fact that Thomas says that God’s knowledge is causative.

Nor am I going to. What I see happening in this thread is a lot of obfuscation. Why don’t you address the issue that I have raised? Can God’s will contradict God’s will? Was it God’s will for Adam and Eve to be both disobedient and obedient to what he had expressly commanded (i.e. that Adam and Eve were not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil)?

 

[BenK]

Firstly, I have never claimed to be able to offer a proof that human beings are free agents. I think there are reasonable theological and scriptural grounds to believe so, but my only concern philosophically speaking is with the claim that God’s omniscience and creativity precludes the possibility of human free agency.

Lets try and work this through. (What little I knew of proper formal logic notation I’ve forgotten, so bear with me as I just spell it out using capitals for the operators).

1. IFF something is NOT eternal THEN it has a beginning.
2. God is eternal.
3. 1+2 THEREFORE God does NOT have a beginning.
4. The universe is NOT eternal.
5. 1+4 THEREFORE The universe has a beginning.

So far so good. I cannot, however, find any way to formally deduce your 6 from your premises, including the unspoken ones that seem to be implied. To be honest, I’m still unclear about what you mean by a ‘primal state’. It feels like you’re talking about a ‘time before time’, which is nonsense. As long as there has been time, there has been a universe.

In your second argument, 8 formally follows from 7 if we allow the unspoken premises ‘IF someone is omniscient THEN they cannot have false knowledge’ and ‘IF someone is omniscient THEN they have no uncertanties about that which they foreknow’, which most people would. 9 is problematic because of the as-yet unclarified meaning of ‘primary state’.

10 is an out-and-out leap in the dark. There is no formal progression from any prior premise to this conclusion.

 

[4_marks]

Rand Al'Thor:

i dont like to say this about religious groups, but i can’t stand calvinsists. i’ve been debating a calvinist kid on another website because i came across his rants about catholics and have been trying to set him straight. he is convinced that basically only calvinists and a few select others from different protestant denominations are going to heaven. he stated that anywhere from 86% - 92% of the world is going to hell.
now not only this, but they believe that everyone is predestined to go either to heaven or hell before they were born. there is no such thing as free will. the thing that kills me is that the biggest sign you’re one of the saved is if you’re a calvinist…real convenient for them.
i have explained that what he has said about catholicism is wrong and i have explained what it is we really believe but he tells me that i am wrong; we dont believe the way i say we do. all he does is quote the bible and claim it’s the only book ever written that we can be 100% sure is 100% accurate.
oh, and when the pope died and someone made a thread about him and what a good man he was, this calvinist comes in and says he went to hell. unbelievable.

how do you get these people to see the truth???

I’ll bet I know what site that was. Many of the people who post there are rabidly anti-Catholic. These are the right-wing religious nutcases that everyone warns you about.

 

[Trelow]

4 marks:

I’ll bet I know what site that was. Many of the people who post there are rabidly anti-Catholic. These are the right-wing religious nutcases that everyone warns you about.

Now what about us rabid Catholic right-wing religious nut cases?

 

[BenK]

Latter point first - you’re making me say what I did not say. Please don’t

On reading my post I realise I made it sound like I thought you were a supralapsarian. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.

In your post #89, you suggested that

perhaps it is a blunder to try to give a rational account of something which is so entirely irrational. Perhaps the attempt to do so, implies that evil is being given the same sort of status as things which are real things: because evil is a parasite on what is real; not a real thing.

Now, I’d agree that there’s a technical ontological sense that evil is not ‘real’ in the sense that good is ‘real’. But here you are suggesting that evil is not real in the sense that we ought not to attempt to give an account of it, by which I understand you mean there is no ‘it’ of which to give account. This, I utterly reject. Ultimate questions of ontology aside, evil is a reality that every human being, including Christ himself, must face. More importantly, I think any predestinarian attempt to avoid the logical conclusion of their own beliefs, that God is the author of all evil (for supralapsarians) or that God is the author of the damnation of individuals (for infralapsarians) on the grounds that there is a sense in which evil is not ontologically real is a simple matter of shirking.