Certainly,
Calvin’s emphasis on the divine will and the ambiguity about its relation to
the world of creatures means [that] the place of secondary causation in his
teaching on providence [is] ambiguous. Secondary causation affirms genuine
creaturely causal efficacy, which remains subject at all times to possible
negation by the divine will. It is no surprise, therefore, to know that Calvin
had to defend himself from accusation that his teaching reduced human activity
in particular to an irrelevance or that he championed some form of fate. That
he always reacted to such allegations somewhat angrily suggests that however he
saw God’s primary causation operating in the world, he did not think it freed
humanity from the responsibility of its own actions. The Libertines, for
example, could not truly distinguish between good and evil because they
conflated primary and secondary causation; if they are correct, then, says
Calvin, ‘we must either attribute sin to God or dissolve the world of sin,
inasmuch as God does everything’ (Calvin, Against the Libertines, 239).
For Calvin, a pancausal doctrine of providence neither absolves people of
responsibility for their actions, particularly their sinful actions, or names
God the author of sin. However, although he could affirm secondary causation as
having its own casual efficacy, Calvin was never able to explain how it related
to primary causation. He did make it quite clear that God was no remote
first cause: God’s primary causation is ontologically but not sequentially prior
to creaturely secondary causation, and, in this sense, it is very much a
positive notion, ensuring that God plays a role personally in everything that
happens (though this personal action effectively is God’s willing of
each and every thing that happens). Nonetheless, Calvin’s stance on the
relation of primary causation to secondary causation is little more than a
simple assertion that the two types of causation are not in competition; but
this leads us to ask why we should see creaturely events and actions in terms
of primary and secondary causation. It is not far simpler to affirm without
qualification that God either determines all things or that he allows the world
to act without his pancasual involvement? There remains, then, an ambiguity
about the relation between God and his creation, and so between primary and
secondary causation. Although Calvin’s desire to avoid the extremes of
occasionalism and divine inaction is laudable, he seems not entirely to have
avoided confusion with the first. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh:
Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster
Theological Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 51-52)
