Monday, August 15, 2022

John Laing on Problems of the Nature of Divine Freedom in Calvinism

  

Calvinist Paul Helm rejects the idea that God had several options from which to choose (i.e., several equally good worlds), because he believes this devolves to the claim that God chose arbitrarily. He wrote, “There seems to be two alternatives: either he chooses on the basis of some accidental feature of one alternative lacked by all the others, a feature not related to optimificity, or he chooses as a result of pure whimsy. Neither of these alternatives is very appealing” (Eternal God [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 180). Helm evidently found it more appealing to claim that God had to create this specific world because his voice was constrained by the fact that this is the best of all possible worlds and it is best for God to create rather than not create. Now, to be fair, Helm did not use the “best of all possible worlds” language, but that is what his argument amounts to, and other prominent Calvinists have made use of such language to describe their own positions, indistinguishable from Helm’s.

 

The fatalistic ramifications of such constraints on God’s creative activity should be obvious. If God is a necessary being, and all his actions flow necessarily from his unchanging and eternal nature, then the results of his actions are also necessary. That is, the creation is necessary, and even we are necessary, even though not in the same wa that God is necessary. His necessity derives from his eternal nature, whereas our necessity derives from his necessary action. We remain contingent in a sort of way, but not in the way we normally think. When I say that I am contingent, I not only mean that my existence is dependent upon someone else (i.e., God), but I also mean that I might not have been and that there is nothing about me to suggest that I had to be. Following Helm’s version of Calvinism, one cannot make the same claims; we are seen as necessary beings of sorts, but this is closer to pagan fatalism than biblical faith. So, it seems we must affirm that God created freely and could have refrained from creating, and while we agree that God must do that which is best, we can affirm that there are a virtually infinite number of equally good worlds God could create. If he could have either created or not created or created differently, then he has libertarian freedom, at least with respect to creating.

 

In addition, if God does not have libertarian freedom, then his providence over history must be as it is and could not have been otherwise. This means that history is necessary and the future is not really open or contingent, at least not with respect to which events will happen and which events will not happen. They are not only determined by God’s free choice of will, but they are determined by his nature so that there is really only one option for the future. Even God could not alter it! To be sure, my Calvinist friends will retort that God would not want to alter it, for it is the best future possible, but the point is that these restrictions do seem to limit God’s providence and detract from his glory and omnipotence in ways that simply saying he cannot do evil, for instance, do not.

 

More importantly, though, they also suggest that God had to save those he did, but no one wants to say that! It is a hallmark of Christian orthodoxy to claim that God freely saves those whom he chooses. In a someway ironic twist, it seems that Calvinist soteriology (in at least one way) fits more closely with libertarian freedom, for Calvinists emphasis that there is nothing in the elect that makes or even inclines God to choose them for salvation, while non-Calvinists often refer to something like foreseen faith in those God eventually elects. Calvinists explain that God’s election of particular persons is solely based in his good pleasure and loving grace. Thus, God’s choice of the elect is not typically depicted as one he had to make (or could not have rejected), because that would suggest something unique, special, outstanding, or otherwise worthy in the individuals elected for salvation. But this just suggests that God’s election is a pure libertarian choice, for any necessity in the election would seemingly undermine either God’s graciousness or the sinner’s unworthiness. If he could have saved or not saved particular persons, then he has libertarian freedom, at least with respect to our salvation. (John Laing, “Determinism and Human Freedom,” in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique, ed. David L. Allen and Steve M. Lemke [Nashville, Tenn.: B&H Academic, 2022], 428-30)

 

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