Calvinist Determinism??

[All_Father]

Was John Calvin himself a determinist? There’s this very popular baptist preacher John Piper that thinks God has determined where every speck of dust will ever fall, and that God causes every death that will ever happen, and so on so that God causes all things. Was John Calvin himself THAT much into God’s sovereignty, or is that a radical stance??

BTW, what’s the difference between hard determinism and soft determinism

 

[PaulinePresbytr]

Was John Calvin himself a determinist? There’s this very popular baptist preacher John Piper that thinks God has determined where every speck of dust will ever fall, and that God causes every death that will ever happen, and so on so that God causes all things. Was John Calvin himself THAT much into God’s sovereignty, or is that a radical stance??

BTW, what’s the difference between hard determinism and soft determinism

Calvin does not make any statements that radical in his Institutes however as a former Calvinist I can say that such a view is certainly not on the fringe. Soft determinism is essentially the same as hard determinism except that it somehow manages to cram belief in free will into the philosophy of determinism. Soft determinism is often called combatibalism because of this.

 

[All_Father]

Ok it sounds like soft determinism is just saying “yeah huh they can still have free will in determinism cuz i say so!!”

“…how?”

“BECAUSE THEY CAN!!! THEY JUST DO!!!”

 

[BeProfOSX]

Depends on what you mean by “determinism.” If you mean that “God foreordains every single thing that happens, including our own choices,” then no Calvinists (at least none that I’m aware of) are determinist.

I think that what you’re reaching for is the difference between infra-lapsarian (i.e. “single” predestination) Calvinism and supra-lapsarian (i.e. “double” predestination) Calvinism. The former teaches that God’s decree of Election is co-dependent (infra) upon His decree to allow the Fall (lapsus) while the later teaches that God’s decree of election is superior (supra.) It’s not that He made those decrees in a chronologically different order (since these decrees were, in the Calvinist view, made before God created time), it’s that certain decisions are logically dependent on other decisions that God made.

The practical upshot of these different views is that while all Calvinists (including myself) believe that the Elect are chosen individually by God, some Calvinists believe that the reprobate are condemned generally in Adam while some Calvinists believe that the reprobate are condemned individually. Or, to put it another way: infra-lapsarians believe that we all, left to our own devices, are damned but God, in His mercy elects some to salvation while supra-lapsarians believe that each individual is either damned or saved by name before the creation of the world and is acted upon supernaturally by God to either harden or soften their hearts towards Heaven or Hell, respectively.

I am definitely in the infra-lapsarian camp, as I think you will find are most New Calvinists. Old Calvinists tend to be supra-lapsarian, although most Calvinists (including myself) tend to see it as a distinction without a difference.

 

[All_Father]

I thought Calvin himself and Calvinism taught double predestination, and that was is one of the things that differentiated him from single predestination by Luther and others.

 

[BeProfOSX]

I thought Calvin himself and Calvinism taught double predestination, and that was is one of the things that differentiated him from single predestination by Luther and others.

Calvin certainly did as do most traditional Calvinists today. New Calvinists are usually either single-predestination or, at the very least, they don’t really care. The end is the same: The Elect get saved and the reprobate don’t.

Luther did teach a kind of single-predestination but he included the notion that the Elect must co-operate with God’s grace to obtain salvation. In Calvinism, salvation is all God’s doing and not at all ours.