Gregory A. Boyd
CHAPTER ONE
GOD CAUSES ALL THINGS
True courage
Shortly after the Battle of Manassas in Ronald Maxwell’s film adaptation of Jeffrey Shaara’s historical novel Gods and Generals, a shell-shocked captain in the Confederate army asks Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson how he could remain so tranquil in battle when the fight was raging all around him. “General,” the young captain asks in an almost reverential tone, “how is it that you can keep so serene and stay so utterly insensible, with a storm of shells and bullets raining about your head?” Jackson’s response reveals his unshakable confidence in the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, including the seemingly random events that take place on the battlefield. “Captain Smith,” Jackson thoughtfully responds, “my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death; I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready, whenever it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live; then all men would be equally brave.”
While Maxwell’s portrayal of this exchange takes certain liberties with the historical record, it accurately depicts both the tone and the theological substance of the actual exchange.1 Apparently, Jackson really was a profoundly courageous man, and his courage really was grounded in his belief in the all-encompassing sovereignty of God. At a memorial service shortly after Jackson’s death from pneumonia on May 10, 1863, the erstwhile adjutant general of the “Stonewall” Brigade, Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney, confirmed that the source of Jackson’s courage was not found in one form of pagan fatalism or another, as some who “knew not whereof they affirmed” were apparently insisting.2 It was found, rather, in his “strong” belief in the providence of God, a belief that viewed all events not as “fixed by an immanent, physical necessity in the series of causes and effects themselves,” but as “directed by his most wise and holy will, according to his plan, and the laws of nature which he has ordained.”3 In short, Jackson’s fearlessness, Dabney explained in a memorial address titled “True Courage,” was grounded in his conviction that the providence of God “is over all his creatures, and all their actions.”4 As such, he was confident that
there is no creature so great as to resist its power, none so minute as to evade its wisdom. Each particular act among the most multitudinous which confound our attention by their number, or the most fortuitous, which entirely baffle our inquiry into their causes, is regulated by this intelligent purpose of God. Even when the thousand missiles of death, invisible to mortal sight, and sent forth aimless by those who launched them, shoot in inexplicable confusion over the battle-field, his eye gives each one an aim and a purpose, according to the plan of his wisdom. Thus teacheth our Saviour.5
The Irresistible Ruler: No Mere “Godling”
That Jackson thought about the providence of God in such a fashion is not surprising given his confessional commitments. As a deacon in the Presbyterian Church, he subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith and also embraced the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms. He stood, therefore, in the doctrinal mainstream of the Reformed wing of the Augustinian tradition.6 According to those in this wing of the tradition, “There is nothing that is, and nothing that comes to pass, that [God] has not first decreed and then brought to pass by His creation or providence.”7 As B. B. Warfield makes clear in his essays on the doctrines of providence and predestination, the God of Reformed believers is no mere “godling”8 that is subject to forces acting “independently … and outside of his teleological control.”9 Rather, “over against all dualistic [or deistic] conceptions” of God on the one hand and “all cosmotheistic [or pantheistic] conceptions” of God on the other, he is “the irresistible Ruler” who is the Creator of “all that is and, as well, the upholder and powerful governor of all that he has made, [and] according to whose will, therefore, all that comes to pass must be ordered.”10 In short, the God of Reformed believers is “an infinite Person” whose “cosmical purpose” is “eternal and independent, all-inclusive and effective.”11 He is “the free determiner of all that comes to pass in the world which is the product of His creative act,” yet he determines all things in such a way that “the real activity of second causes” is both affirmed and maintained,12 and for this reason he is neither the “sole cause” of everything that transpires in the universe that he has made,13 nor is he the author of evil.14 Since God’s “providential control” extends to all his “works” and “all his creatures and all their actions of every kind,”15 Reformed believers conclude that “all things without exception … are disposed by Him, and His will is the ultimate account of all that occurs. Heaven and earth and all that is in them are the instruments through which He works His ends. Nature, nations, and the fortunes of the individual alike present in all their changes the transcript of His purpose.”16
Preservation and Government
Among the most thoughtful and compelling articulations of the classical Reformed understanding of providence is that which is found in the second volume of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. According to Bavinck, “The providence of God … is—in the beautiful words of the Heidelberg Catechism—’ the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures and so rules them that all things, in fact, come to us, not by chance but from his fatherly hand’ (Lord’s Day 10, Q. & A. 27).”17 When the doctrine of providence is understood in this fashion, it has, as Bavinck insists, “enormous scope,” for it encompasses not just some of God’s works but “the entire implementation of all the decrees that have bearing on the world after it has been called into being by creation.”18Indeed,
if the act of creation is excepted from providence, it is as full as the free knowledge of God (scientia libera) and the decrees of God, as is everything that exists and occurs in time. It extends to everything that is treated in dogmatics after the doctrine of creation and includes both the works of nature and of grace. All the works of God ad extra, which are subsequent to creation, are works of his providence.19
For Bavinck and Reformed believers generally, then, the providence of God has to do with everything that God does to ensure that his purposes are accomplished in time It does not have to do with the “works of God” per se but “limits itself to a description” of the relationship in which God always and everywhere stands “toward his creatures”20 In short, God actively “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11 ESV)21 not simply by preserving “all creatures in their own state (which is done by a conservation of essence in the species, of existence in individuals and of virtues to their operations).”22 His providential activity has to do, in other words, with more than simply “giv[ing] and conserv[ing] to second causes the power of acting and permit[ting] them to act,” as “the Jesuits followed by the Socinians and Remonstrants” were eager to maintain.23 Rather, as Turretin puts it, God’s providence “consists not only in the conservation of things, but also in the concourse of God; not indifferent and general [in the sense that it passively allows second causes to determine themselves], but particular and specific (by which it flows immediately into both cause and effect).”24
As such, Reformed believers are persuaded that God actively accomplishes all his good purposes not just by preserving and passively observing what he has created but also by simultaneously working concurrently with created things “to cause them to act as they do,”25 and governing their activity according to his wisdom to direct them to fulfill what Warfield calls “His all-determining will.”26 While Reformed believers concede that the modes of God’s operation in preservation, in concurrence, and in government can be distinguished in one sense, they insist that these operations cannot be in another sense because they “are not parts or segments in which the work of providence is divided and which, being materially and temporally separate, succeed one another.”27 Rather, these operations “are always integrally connected; they intermesh at all times.”28 It is for this reason, then, that the providence of God involves, not a series of isolated and independent acts in which God works in one way and then in another with created things, but rather the organic and integrated means by which “the purposive will of the eternal God” is progressively realized.29 “From the very beginning,” Bavinck argues,
preservation is also government, and government is concurrence, and concurrence is preservation. Preservation tells us that nothing exists, not only no substance, but also no power, no activity, no idea, unless it exists totally from, through, and to God. Concurrence makes known to us the same preservation as an activity such that, far from suspending the existence of creatures, it above all affirms and maintains it. And government describes the other two as guiding all things in such a way that the final goal determined by God will be reached. And always, from beginning to end, providence is one simple, almighty, and omnipresent power.30
Providence as “Continuous Creation”
The Creator-Creature Relationship: Utterly Unique
At the formative center of this understanding of providence is the insistence that the universe was “freely created out of nothing, by a creator whose perfection is in no way enhanced by the act of creating, so that [the act of creation] must be thoroughly gratuitous.”31 When God spoke the universe into existence, advocates of this view of providence maintain, he created a universe that is simultaneously both distinct from and yet utterly dependent on him for its existence from one moment to the next Unlike the gods of the various pagan religions, which are “never conceived as capable of being without the world,” the God of Christian theism “could have been all that there is,” these believers insist, because the world, quite simply, “does not have to be.”32 “In Christian belief,” Robert Sokolowski argues, “we understand the world as that which might not have been, and correlatively we understand God as capable of existing, in undiminished goodness and greatness, even if the world had not been.”33
Since the God of Christian theism is not like the gods of the pagan religions—in that he is not “established as God” by that which distinguishes him from “other things … within the horizon of this world”34—it follows that the relationship between God and the universe ought not to be construed “as we construe [the relationship between] objects within the universe,”35 for the relation “of the creator-of-all with all that is created” is utterly unique.36 Indeed, it is the utterly unique nature of this relationship that establishes “the utterly gratuitous character of the act of creation,”37 for since the world does not “have to be,” it must be that it now is only because of “a choice. And if the choice was not motivated by the need for ‘there’ to be more perfection and greatness, then the world is there through an incomparable generosity,” a generosity “that has no parallel in what we experience in the world.”38 What this suggests, then, is that the world we live in is radically contingent39 and ultimately exists from one moment to the next, not for the benefit of human beings or anything else that is found within the horizon of this world, but “simply for the glory of God. The glory of God,” Sokolowski argues, “is seen not only in particularly splendid parts of the world but in the very existence of the world and everything in it.”40
Absolute Dependence and “Continuous Creation”
For those who conceive of the Creator-creature relationship in this fashion, it follows that the created order is utterly dependent on the providential activity of the Creator for its moment-to-moment existence, because it does not have the power of existence in itself. It has, in other words, “no independent existence,” for from one moment to the next it exists “only in and through and unto God (Neh. 9:6; Ps. 104:30; Acts 17:28; Rom. 11:36; Col. 1:15ff.; Heb. 1:3; Rev. 4:11),” despite what those with deistic tendencies would have us believe.41 While those with deistic tendencies presume that God is a more or less passive agent to whom the world is related much like a machine is related to the person who made it, Reformed believers insist that “the relation to the creation sustained by God, and that sustained by man to the work of his hand,” are entirely distinct.42 Indeed, as Archibald Alexander Hodge makes clear in his response to those who represent the Creator “as exterior to his creation in the same manner in which a mechanician is exterior to the machine he has made and set in motion,” whereas “a man is necessarily exterior to his work, and even when present capable of directing his attention only to one point [of his handiwork] at a time God is omnipresent, not as to his essence only, but as to his infinite knowledge, wisdom, love, righteousness, and power, with every atom of creation for every instant of duration.”43 What this suggests, then, is that for Reformed believers, the world of secondary causes is never “separated from the primary cause and [therefore] independent,”44 but it “is always interpenetrated as well as embraced in the divine thought and will, and ever is what it is and as it is because of God.”45
Among those who insist that the universe is both radically contingent and utterly dependent are those Reformed thinkers who embrace the doctrine of concurrence, in part because they recognize that, given what the notion of utter dependence entails, the very idea of an “independent creature” is nonsense.46 Whereas some Reformed thinkers repudiate concurrence because they are persuaded that “the power to originate our own acts” is compatible with the fact of creaturely dependence,47 others maintain that since “the world has no existence in itself,” independence of any kind — including the kind that is presupposed by those who insist that secondary causes have the capacity to act more or less independently of God, the primary cause—“is tantamount to nonexistence.”48 Indeed, as Bavinck insists, “A creature is, by definition, of itself a completely dependent being: that which does not exist of itself cannot for a moment exist by itself either. If God does not do anything,” Bavinck contends, “then nothing exists and nothing happens.”49
How, then, do Reformed believers conceive of the providence of God given the radically contingent nature of the creaturely condition? What does the fact of absolute dependence suggest, in other words, for how they understand the providential activity of the Creator? Reformed thinkers who embrace the doctrine of concurrence are persuaded that the answer is found in the intimate nature of the relationship between “the activity of God in creating the world” on the one hand and God’s ongoing work of providence on the other.50 According to Bavinck, although “it is the same omnipotent and omnipresent power of God that is at work both in creation and in providence,” nevertheless the precise nature of God’s work in creation and in providence is “essentially distinct” because in each case, “the relation that God assumes toward his creatures” is different.51 Whereas in creation God “calls into being the things that are not, things that have no other existence than that of ideas and decrees in the being of God,” in providence — which, like creation, “is a positive act, not a giving permission to exist but a causing to exist and working from moment to moment” — God actively sustains those things that have received “their own unique existence” and as a consequence are distinct from him.52 In providence, in other words, the power of God yields not existence, as if “creatures or second causes have no real continuous existence but are reproduced every successive moment out of nothing, in their respective successive states, conditions, and actions by the perpetual efflux of the ‘vis creatrix’ of God.”53 Rather, it yields “persistence in existence”—the kind of “persistence in existence” that does not “nullify” but rather establishes the real existence of secondary causes — and this is why thinkers like Bavinck insist that the providential activity of the Creator ought to be regarded as a “continuous creation,” that is, as “a form of preservation which presupposes creation.”54 Conceiving of the doctrine of providence in this fashion, Bavinck fittingly concludes, presents us with a “mystery” that far exceeds our capacity to understand, and this is why our minds are “always inclined to do less than justice” either to the fact of our absolute dependence on God or to the reality of our unique creaturely existence.55 “It is this inclination,” he notes,
that underlies both pantheism and Deism. Both of these trends proceed from the same error and oppose God and the world to each other as two competing entities. The former sacrifices the world to God, creation to providence, and believes that God’s existence can only be a divinely infinite existence if it denies the existence of the world, dissolves it into mere appearance, and allows it to be swallowed up by divine existence. The latter sacrifices God to the world, providence to creation, and believes that creatures come into their own to the extent that they become less dependent on God and distance themselves from God. The Christian, however, confesses that the world and every creature in it have received their own existence, but increase in reality, freedom, and authenticity to the extent that they are more dependent on God and exist from moment to moment from, through, and to God A creature is the more perfect to the degree that God indwells it more and permeates it with his being. In that respect preservation is even greater than creation, for the latter only initiated the beginning of existence, but the former is the progressive and ever increasing self-communication of God to his creatures. Providence is “the progressive expression in the universe of his divine perfection, the progressive realization in it of the archetypal ideal of perfect wisdom and love.”56
The “True View” of Providence Summarized
For classical Reformed thinkers, then, the “true view” of providence stands midway between the extremes of deism on the one hand and pantheism on the other,57 for it affirms not just that secondary causes are and remain distinct from God, the primary cause, but also that the primary cause “confers reality” on secondary causes and that these causes continue to exist “solely as a result of the first.”58 Indeed, it is the primary cause, Reformed thinkers reason, that “is precisely the reason for the self-activity of the secondary causes, and these causes, sustained from beginning to end by God’s power, work with a strength that is appropriate and natural to them.”59 As such, the classical Reformed view of providence can be summarized according to “the following propositions:
Perceived Weaknesses of Divine Omnicausality
Divine Omnicausality and the Pagan Context
So what are we to make of the doctrine of providence that I have attempted to outline in the preceding pages? In my estimation, the primary difficulty with the doctrine is found not in the doctrine itself but in the increasingly pagan milieu that makes the doctrine sound almost completely implausible to contemporary listeners. It perhaps goes without saying that the doctrine itself commends a vision of God and of his providence that is growing more and more foreign in a culture that is increasingly beholden to pagan assumptions about God and the self. As scholars like David Wells, Peter Jones, and Ann Douglas have argued, we live in a culture in which more “classical” forms of spirituality are slowly being eclipsed by one form or another of “pagan spirituality,”61 the heart of which is always found in the repudiation of what J. Gresham Machen calls “the awful transcendence of God.”62As a consequence of this accommodation, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those who are and are not members of the church even to consider the possibility that, as created beings, we are, as Warfield puts it, “wholly at the disposal of another.”63 In short, the doctrine of divine omnicausality is growing more and more difficult for many of our contemporaries to take seriously because we think increasingly little of God and progressively more of ourselves and of our capacities. Indeed, to one degree or another, we have accommodated the paganism of the age and in the process have “gone soft” on the Creator/creature distinction, and as a consequence, as Warfield provocatively notes, “we wish ‘to belong to ourselves,’ and we resent belonging, especially belonging absolutely, to anybody else, even if that anybody else be God.”64
Moral Responsibility and Determinism
It goes without saying, however, that many who reject the doctrine of divine omnicausality do so, not because they are eager to embrace one form of pagan spirituality or another, but because they are persuaded that rejecting omnicausality is what faithfulness to the God of the Bible requires them to do. The determinism entailed in the notion that God is the primary cause of all things must be repudiated, these scholars reason, not only because it is inconsistent “with the moral responsibility that is essential to the Christian understanding of reality,”65 but more importantly because it commends a vision of God that they find revolting.
The determinism that is entailed in the doctrine of divine omnicausality must be repudiated in the first place, these scholars reason, because it undermines the genuineness of human freedom. According to these scholars, we should embrace ways of telling the Christian story that are grounded in the conviction that the providence of God is occupied not with the “operation” of all things generally but, as Turretin summarizes their position, “only with the conservation of things.”66 We should think of “the divine concurrence or continuing ontological support” of the world that God has made, in other words, as “flow[ing] not into the activity of the will,” as those who embrace the doctrine of divine omnicausality maintain, but, as Richard Muller describes their view, “into its effect, leaving the will entirely free while at the same time providentially supporting its result.”67
Reformed believers typically respond to the suggestion that “there are moments in the framework of volitional contingency that arise entirely from the creature”68 by arguing along two different lines. According to the first line of argument, they grant that although the question of how “the concourse of God can be reconciled with the contingency and liberty of second causes—especially of the will of man”— is difficult and “incapable of being sufficiently explained” by those who are contingent beings themselves,69 nevertheless the question is principally a theological rather than a philosophical question. The question that should guide our attempts to formulate a Christian understanding of providence, they argue, is not the philosophical question of whether it is logically possible for God to create contingent beings that have the ability to act independently of his all-determining will, but the theological question of what the Scriptures teach regarding the relationship between the providence of God and human freedom in this world.70When our consideration of the question is “religiously restrain[ed] within the bounds prescribed by [Scripture],” Reformed believers insist, it becomes immediately clear that in this world, God “concurs with all second causes and especially with the human will” while simultaneously leaving the “contingency and liberty of the will … unimpaired.”71 Scripture presumes that determinism and genuine human freedom are compatible, in other words, even though it does not explain the mechanics of how this is possible, and “the method of this reconciliation cannot in this life be clearly and perfectly explained by us.”72 As Turretin summarizes the matter, when we eschew eisegesis and begin with the data of Scripture, the careful analysis of the text yields two “indubitable” conclusions, both of which must be held in tension without allowing either one to cancel the other out:
that God on the one hand by his providence not only decreed but most certainly secures the event of all things, whether free or contingent; on the other hand, however, man is always free in acting and many effects are contingent. Although I cannot understand how these can be mutually connected together, yet (on account of ignorance of the mode) the thing itself is (which is certain from another source, i. e., from the word) not either to be called in question or wholly denied.73
According to the second line of argument, Reformed believers suggest not only that libertarian freedom is impossible to reconcile with many of the things that Scripture explicitly teaches about God’s relationship to the things that “hold together” (Col. 1:17) and have their “being” (Acts 17:28) in him,74 but also that the concept of libertarian freedom is itself extremely problematic, for it presumes that “some things existed prior to and apart from the creative work of God and continue to exist outside of God’s providence.”75 This presumption, Richard Muller argues, is seen most clearly in the Molinist and Arminian view of divine concurrence: Molina and Arminius after him argue that the divine action or concurrence that supports the existence of works or effects brought about by contingent agents enters the finite order of events in the effect, not in the secondary or finite cause. God thus supports the effect and gives it actuality while not strictly bringing it about or willing it. The finite agent acts independently in bringing about the action or effect.76
While Reformed believers acknowledge that theories of providence that are grounded in a commitment to libertarian freedom can in some sense account for the “effects” of secondary causes, nevertheless they insist that these theories fall “into ontological absurdity” because they cannot account “for the action” of the secondary causes themselves.77 Though they affirm both the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the fact of creaturely dependence on the one hand, they simultaneously presume that human beings with libertarian freedom are sources of primary causality on the other, and thus they reveal a Manichaean tendency78 that, in addition to being essentially unintelligible,79 subverts the solas of the Reformation as well as the essential tenets of a biblical metaphysic. Indeed, the “power to do otherwise”80 that is essential to these theories of providence not only “assaults the doctrine of salvation by grace” by regarding human beings with libertarian freedom as “the first and effective agent[s] in salvation.”81 More importantly, it challenges “the assumption that God alone is original, self-existent, and necessary and that the entire contingent order depends on God for its existence,” for it presumes — without so much as a shred of explicit biblical support— that finite agents have the capacity to bring themselves and other things “from potency to actuality without the divine concurrence.”82
The Revulsion Factor: Confusing God and Satan
The determinism entailed in the doctrine of divine omnicausality must be repudiated in the second place, these scholars reason, because it is grounded in a vision of God that they believe is nothing less than revolting. A particularly disturbing example of this sentiment is found in Gregory Boyd’s none-too-subtle suggestion that there are legitimate grounds for confusing the God of Reformed believers with Satan. In his book Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy, Boyd notes:
If God, not Satan, is behind all the nightmares of the world, then far from trusting God we should rather follow the advice of W. Robert McClelland and consider it our moral obligation to “rage” against God as our “enemy.” … He agrees that we should not accept all things as coming from God’s hand. In his view, we should revolt against God because all things come from his hand. From the blueprint [i. e., the omnicausal] model of providence McClelland draws the logical conclusion that God can only be understood in the midst of suffering as “the enemy.” In my estimation, all of McClelland’s instincts are right except for the fact that he confuses God and Satan. If one grants McClelland’s omni-controlling view of God, however, everything that he says about God follows.83
While Reformed believers usually respond to a polemic like this by commending the critic for his candor even while challenging the critic for a lack of nuance that is appalling, they also insist that the Reformed view of providence is the only view that can unambiguously affirm what Scripture affirms with respect to particular evils. Indeed, not only can the Reformed view affirm that God does in fact work in some mysterious way through pain and suffering and evil for the good of his children and the glory of his name (there is no better example of this, they suggest, than the cross, which happened according to “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” Acts 2:23 ESV; cf. Acts 2 and 4), but it can also salvage purpose and meaning in the midst of suffering precisely because it affirms that “all the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies” (Ps. 25:10 ESV). In short, Reformed believers are persuaded that particular evils happen not merely because “God chose to actualize a possible world in which those evils would obtain,” nor because “he — for one arbitrary reason or another—chose not to coercively intervene in human history in order to prevent such evils from happening in this world.” Rather, particular evils happen because he ordained that they would, and he did so for reasons that, while ultimately inscrutable, nevertheless serve to conform believers more and more to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:28 – 30) and, in the process, to cultivate in them the Christian virtues of perseverance, proven character, and hope (Rom. 5:1 – 5). This is why Reformed believers conclude with Calvin, in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:18, that “even in our afflictions we have large occasion of thanksgiving. For what is fitter or more suitable for pacifying us, than when we learn that God embraces us in Christ so tenderly, that he turns to our advantage and welfare everything that befalls us?”84
Speaking of Contemptible Beings
In response to Dr. Boyd’s none-too-subtle suggestion, then, many Reformed believers insist that although there is a viable candidate for a truly contemptible deity within the orbit of contemporary evangelicalism, it is not the God “who works all things” — including evil things — “according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11 ESV). Rather, it is the God of open theism, for that God, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, is a capricious being who cannot be trusted to work in every situation in a way that maximizes good and minimizes evil for his creatures.85 The justification for this contention is found in the arbitrary role that “select determinism” plays in the open view of providence.86 As Dr. Boyd’s treatment of Peter’s denial of Jesus makes clear, the God of open theism “can and does at times unilaterally intervene and work in a coercive way to bring about a certain state of affairs,”87 yet he does so without “an all-encompassing divine blueprint.”88 Indeed, he retains providential control over a future that is partly settled and partly open, in part by acting in ways that violate the self-determining freedom of responsible moral agents, yet he does so without an exhaustive plan that determines when he will act unilaterally and when he will not, thus suggesting that his unilateral activity is governed by nothing more than the passing whims of one particular moment or the next.
This willingness to sanction coercion—particularly coercion that is entirely arbitrary because it does not take place according to an “overarching divine purpose”89 and plan—poses an insurmountable problem for the open view of providence, I would argue, for at least two reasons. First, it demonstrates that the foundational assumptions of the openness program cannot be consistently applied to the analysis of the flow of history. Openness theologians would have us believe that the future is open to God as well as to human beings because the “ultimate purpose [of God] includes having free agents”90 whose libertarian freedom is “irrevocable.”91 The willingness of openness theologians to allow for God to work in a fashion that violates the self-determining freedom of responsible moral agents jettisons the coherence of the openness program, then, for it establishes that the God of open theism cannot accomplish his ultimate purpose without violating an essential component of that purpose. Indeed, it establishes that the God of open theism is not just an arbitrary being but a conflicted being as well.
Second, the willingness of openness theologians to sanction coercion makes it much more difficult—if not altogether impossible—to rescue the God of open theism from being tarnished by the problem of evil. Why? Before I suggest an answer to this question, note that openness theologians would have us believe that their view of evil is superior to the Reformed view, not only because it helps us understand that evil in general and specific evils in particular are simply the unfortunate consequences of free decisions to reject the love of God, but also because it helps us understand why “the all-powerful Creator of the world” does not prevent certain events “he wishes would not take place.”92 Whereas Reformed believers insist that there is “a specific divine reason for each specific evil in the world,”93 advocates of the open view are persuaded that certain evils occur because God—in order to preserve his integrity — simply cannot prevent them without revoking the irrevocable gift of self-determining freedom that is necessary to love. But if the God of open theism in fact is willing—as he was in the case of Peter’s denial of Jesus — to revoke the gift of self-determining freedom in order to bring about states of affairs that he really wants to bring about, then what becomes of this defense? In other words, what becomes of the attempt to get God “off the hook” for the problem of evil if he in fact is willing to violate the gift of self-determining freedom that he has given to moral agents, the gift that openness theologians insist is not just “irrevocable” but “the key to morally responsible personhood"?94 What becomes of it, in short, is that it is destroyed, for if God can and does work unilaterally from time to time to bring about states of affairs that he really wants to bring about, and if this coercive involvement can and does involve—as it did in the case of Peter—real violations of the gift of self-determining freedom given to responsible moral agents, then we simply cannot account for particular evils by appealing to the self-determining freedom of wicked moral agents.
This willingness to sanction coercion is the kiss of death to the open view of providence, then, because it establishes that the God of open theism is a capricious being who cannot be trusted to do what is best in every circumstance for those he claims to love. Indeed, while the God of open theism is clearly able to intervene in the course of human history to prevent the pain and suffering that are associated with particular evils, he nevertheless often does not, not because his nonintervention is governed by an overarching purpose or plan that determines when his intervening mercies will be extended and when they will be withheld, but because, in the end, he just does not feel like intervening in a particular circumstance What this suggests, then, is that when push comes to shove, people suffer in the open view neither because the self-determining freedom of wicked moral agents is irrevocable, nor because their suffering was ordained for a greater good, but because God was simply not inclined to intervene coercively on their behalf at some point in the historical past or present, and this is why their suffering is entirely pointless. While openness theologians would have us believe that they have a viable solution to the problem of evil in general, in fact they can only hope that those who have been traumatized by particular evils do not find out that their suffering could have been prevented if God had simply been inclined to act in their cases as he does from time to time in others, namely, coercively.
Concluding Reflections on Divine Omnicausality
The Meaning of the World
There are a number of reasons why I would argue that the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal in the contemporary context, particularly by those who are eager to maintain the methodological priority of Scripture in their thinking about these matters. The first has to do with how it encourages us to think about what it means really to understand the world in which we live. Given that every aspect of the created order is utterly dependent on the providential activity of the Creator for its moment-to-moment existence, it follows that the ultimate explanation for everything that is, is found in the will of the one who wills to sustain what is from moment to moment to moment. As Scott Oliphint argues, “A thing is what it is by virtue of the plan and activity of God. A thing holds relationships to other things and to all things generally because of, and only because of, that all-sufficient plan. To attempt to know some ‘thing,’ therefore, without knowing it as having its being and meaning by virtue of God’s plan is, in some important sense, not to know it truly at all.”95 What this suggests, then, is that the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal because it encourages us to think about the meaning of the world and everything in it in overtly theocentric, as opposed to covertly anthropocentric, terms. It reminds us, in other words, that no aspect of created reality can be understood rightly outside of the context of the Creator’s good, sovereign, and sustaining will, for without that will, absolutely nothing would exist, and nothing would transpire. “What is true with respect to the existence of the whole space-time world,” Cornelius Van Til argues,
is equally true with respect to the meaning of it. As the absolute and independent existence of God determines the derivative existence of the universe, so the absolute meaning that God has for himself implies that the meaning of every fact in the universe must be related to God. Scripture says constantly that the world has its whole meaning in the fact that it was created for the glory of God. This appears most beautifully in Revelation 4:11, where the redeemed creation joins in one grand Hallelujah chorus in praise of the Creator: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they are, and were created."… If we hold with Paul (Romans 11:36 KJV) that “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever,” we see clearly that the existence and meaning of every fact in this universe must in the last analysis be related to the self-conscious and eternally self-subsistent God of the Scriptures.96
A Sacramental Universe
Another reason that I believe the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal has to do with how this doctrine encourages us to view the world in which we live. If the Creator/creature distinction as interpreted by those who endorse the doctrine of divine omnicausality holds any water, then we should view the world in which we live in a “sacramental” as opposed to a “secular” sense, because the world in which we live is itself not neutral. Every aspect of the world in which we live, and thus “every element of man’s experience,” has a kind of sacred significance, in other words, not because it is sacred in itself but because it is “an object of cognition that … leads ultimately to God,” who is both the cause of the whole creation and the end “to which the whole creation inexorably and teleologically strives.”97 Viewing created things as objective testimonies to the “glorious qualities”98 of their Maker, then, gives fresh momentum to the efforts of Christian scholars to integrate faith and learning, for it reminds us that there are, as Warfield argues, “two ways of looking at the world.”99 “We may see the world and absorb ourselves in the wonders of nature,” he suggests. “That is the scientific way. Or we may look right through the world and see God behind it. That is the religious way.”100 “The scientific way of looking at the world is not wrong,” Warfield reminds us,
any more than the glass manufacturer’s way of looking at the window. This way of looking at things has its very important uses. Nevertheless the window was placed there not to be looked at but to be looked through; and the world has failed of its purpose unless it too is looked through and the eye rests not on it but on its God. Yes, its God; for it is of the essence of the religious view of things that God is seen in all that is and in all that occurs. The universe is his, and in all its movements speaks of him, because it does only his will.101
The Free-Will Defense and the Problem of Evil Reconsidered
Finally, and in conclusion, the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal because it calls believers not primarily to philosophical speculation but to humble faith, particularly with respect to the two “riddles” that continue to perplex Christian thinkers.102 The first of these has to do with the understanding of human freedom that the Christian worldview presupposes. The doctrine of divine omnicausality does not trade in an understanding of human freedom that is familiar yet unintelligible. Rather, it encourages believers to embrace an understanding of freedom that, although ultimately inscrutable, emphatically affirms our status as contingent beings while attempting to do justice to the kinds of tensions that are found in the overarching covenantal framework of Scripture, as well as in particular texts like Isaiah 10, Daniel 4, Acts 2 and 4, 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, and Philippians 2.
The second riddle has to do with the related issue of the problem of evil. Given Walter Schultz’s recent critique of the role of libertarian freedom in the free-will defense, we now know that “it is possible for God to achieve his purposes (as libertarian free-will theists describe them) and to prevent every moral evil.”103 We now know, in other words, that despite what the proponents of the free-will defense would have us believe, “apparently pointless or excessive suffering as a result of the actions of others is not an unavoidable consequence of granting libertarian freedom.”104 What this suggests, then, is that the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal because we can no longer pretend that the concept of libertarian freedom has the explanatory power that many have presumed it to have with respect to the problem of evil. It is now clear, in other words, that even if we grant the existence and coherence of libertarian freedom, evil must be regarded as something that is not contrary to, but an essential component of, God’s will, something that advances rather than frustrates his good purposes and plans. This, of course, is how Reformed believers have always thought about the problem of evil, for it is only in this way of thinking, they argue, that we can salvage purpose and meaning in the midst of pain and suffering. Indeed, as Warfield argues, it is in this way of thinking, and in this way of thinking alone, that
the plummet is let down to the bottom of the Christian’s confidence and hope. It is because we cannot be robbed of God’s providence that we know, amid whatever encircling gloom, that all things shall work together for good to those that love him. It is because we cannot be robbed of God’s providence that we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ — not tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword…. Were not God’s providence over all, could trouble come without his sending, were Christians the possible prey of this or the other fiendish enemy, when perchance God was musing, or gone aside, or on a journey, or sleeping, what certainty of hope could be ours? “Does God send trouble?” Surely, surely. He and he only. To the sinner in punishment, to his children in chastisement. To suggest that it does not always come from his hands is to take away all our comfort.105
In the end, then, the doctrine of divine omnicausality merits a fresh appraisal not because it imagines that we can scrutinize that which is “inscrutable” (Rom. 11:33 ESV), but because it reminds us that we are called to place our confidence in the character and promises of our Father, even when we have no idea precisely what he is doing as he works out the particulars of his sovereign will. This is why Reformed believers conclude that the doctrine of providence is properly understood not as “a philosophical system but,” as Bavinck puts it, “a confession of faith, the confession that, notwithstanding appearances, neither Satan nor a human being nor any other creature, but God and he alone — by his almighty and everywhere present power—preserves and governs all things.”106
RESPONSE TO PAUL KJOSS HELSETH
A A. Hodge’s six-point summary of the classical Reformed view of divine providence, quoted by Paul Kjoss Helseth under “The ‘True View’ of Providence Summarized,” falls short of expressing the radical distinctives of the Reformed position that Helseth defends. The Molinist would affirm all of these points — except, perhaps, the sixth, which punts to inscrutability rather than provides an account of the nature of divine action in the world. Helseth’s own characterization, “divine omnicausality,” is a more forthright description of his view but still not entirely adequate, since a Molinist doctrine of simultaneous concurrence could also be so characterized Rather, what truly distinguishes Helseth’s view is that it is a form of divine, causal determinism. Helseth thinks that God causally determines everything that happens.
Now, certainly God has the power to create a world characterized by universal, causal determinism. He could have created a world operating according to deterministic natural laws and containing no sentient creatures at all. Perhaps he could have even created a world containing sentient, self-conscious beings who have the illusion of indeterministic freedom of the will, just as he could have created vats containing brains that have the illusion of bodies acting in some external world. But why should we think that he has done so? Why should we think that our experience of indeterministic freedom is illusory?
Helseth seems to provide two grounds for embracing universal, divine, causal determinism. The first and foremost consideration is that Scripture requires it But is that really the case? It needs to be kept in mind that universal, divine determinism is an interpretation of Scripture, an interpretation that some Reformed divines themselves regard as irreconcilable with other clear teachings of Scripture. The scriptural worldview involves a very strong conception not only of divine sovereignty over the world and human affairs but also of human freedom and responsibility. While too numerous to list here, biblical passages affirming God’s sovereignty have been grouped by D. A. Carson under four main heads: (1) God is the creator, ruler, and possessor of all things, (2) God is the ultimate personal cause of all that happens, (3) God elects his people, and (4) God is the unacknowledged source of good fortune or success.107 No one who takes these passages seriously can embrace open theism, which denies God’s sovereignty over the contingent events of history. On the other hand, the conviction that human beings are free moral agents also permeates the Hebrew way of thinking, as is evident from passages that Carson lists under nine heads: (1) people face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people’s sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved.108 These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which precludes human freedom.
Turretin recognizes these two streams of competing texts. Helseth writes:
As Turretin summarizes the matter, when we eschew eisegesis and begin with the data of Scripture, the careful analysis of the text yields two “indubitable” conclusions, both of which must be held in tension without allowing either one to cancel the other out:
“that God on the one hand by his providence not only decreed but most certainly secures the event of all things, whether free or contingent; on the other hand, however, man is always free in acting and many effects are contingent. Although I cannot understand how these can be mutually connected together, yet (on account of ignorance of the mode) the thing itself is (which is certain from another source, i. e., from the word) not either to be called in question or wholly denied.”109
When one’s interpretation of Scripture leads one into this sort of cul de sac, it is a good idea to reassess whether one has, indeed, rightly interpreted Scripture.
Molinism provides a different interpretation of the same scriptural data. It affirms God’s decreeing and securing the event of all things, along with human freedom and contingency, and moreover, provides the means of their reconciliation through the doctrine of divine middle knowledge. Middle knowledge enables us to explain how God brings all things to pass (which is the affirmation of Scripture), but not by means of universal, causal, determinism (which is Helseth’s interpretation of Scripture), thereby preserving contingency and indeterminism. Helseth thinks that God brings all things to pass by strongly actualizing (causally determining) various states of affairs, whereas the Molinist thinks that God weakly actualizes certain states of affairs (by bringing about the nondetermining circumstances in which he knew persons would freely choose something). Given the distinction between strong and weak actualization, I think it would be quite difficult to show that a Molinist interpretation of the scriptural data is exegetically untenable.110 On the contrary, it enjoys the considerable advantage of being coherent.
Curiously, Helseth does not, as Turretin advises, hold these truths in tension without allowing either one to cancel out the other. By affirming universal, divine determinism and a compatibilistic view of freedom, he abolishes the mystery. Understanding how determinism and a compatibilistic view of freedom can be mutually connected is not difficult. Ultimately, there is no contingency in the world, and everything we think and do is causally determined by God. The problem is that such an interpretation of Scripture is lopsided in that it must run roughshod over all the texts that seem to imply indeterminism with respect to human choices and actions. It denies what Scripture repeatedly and variously affirms: human beings are not totally determined by God.
Consider, for example, Paul’s promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it"(RSV). Imagine, then, a situation in which a Christian succumbs to temptation. According to this passage, there was available to him at the time of temptation an escape route that he could have taken; he did not have to yield. He had the power to act otherwise than he did. To say that he was causally determined to succumb and so was unable to do otherwise is to deny this promise of Scripture.
Helseth’s response to the failure of his view to provide a coherent interpretation of scriptural texts is odd. He says, citing Schreiner, “If the ‘scandal’ of the Reformed worldview ‘is that ultimately the logical problems posed cannot be fully resolved,’ the dirty little secret of the Arminian worldview is that the independence that the Arminian system requires ‘cannot be exegetically vindicated.’ “ I am puzzled by this retort. Reformed thinkers themselves recognize the broad stream of texts that justify the Arminian postulate of indeterministic human free will. The question, then, seems to be whether the doctrine of middle knowledge will enable the Arminian to offer a plausible interpretation of those texts which affirm that God brings all things to pass. Helseth does not address this question, so far as I can see, in his contribution.
Universal, divine determinism cannot, as the classical Reformed divines cited by Helseth frankly acknowledge, do justice to the full data of Scripture, and that is why the Reformed view holds that the reconciliation of these texts is inscrutable By contrast, Molinism, I am convinced, can reconcile these texts and so offers us a coherent interpretation of Scripture. Helseth has offered no scriptural arguments against Molinism. So the argument from Scripture fails to support Helseth’s doctrine of universal, divine determinism.
The second argument Helseth gives in support of determinism is that libertarian freedom is theologically and philosophically problematic. Unfortunately, Helseth does not develop these arguments at any length but refers to the work of others. With respect to the theological problems, Helseth cites Muller’s objection to the Molinist/Arminian doctrine of simultaneous concurrence. The objection, as I understand it, seems to be this: according to Molina, God does not act on the human will to produce its effect but rather acts along with the human will to produce its effect. This is alleged to be ontologically absurd, however, because no finite being can bring anything, including its own will, from potency to actuality without God’s concurrence.
It is not clear to me that the Molinist is guilty of doing anything more than simply disagreeing with the Thomistic/Reformed view of divine concurrence. It is not the case, as Muller alleges, that according to Molina, “God thus supports the effect and gives it actuality while not strictly bringing it about or willing it.”111 On the contrary, in Molina’s view, God not only conserves both the secondary agent and its effect in being; he also wills specifically that the effect be produced, and he concurs with the agent by causing the intended effect. Without such concurrence, the effect would not be produced. The difference between Molina’s view and the Thomistic/Reformed view is that God does not cause the secondary agent’s will to choose one way or the other; he just concurs with the agent’s choice by causing the intended effect. (This is, by the way, why the Molinist view holds that God is not the author of sin. While he concurs with the sinful will in producing its effect, God does not move the agent’s will to sin. By contrast, in the Thomistic/Reformed view, God causes the agent to sin by moving his will to choose evil, which makes the allegation that God is the author of sin difficult to deny.)
So what is the problem here supposed to be? In the Molinist/Arminian view, secondary free agents are capable of willing one thing or another without being caused to do so by God. It is not as though some potency actualizes itself. Rather, the soul, which is an actual entity, actualizes it own potency to will this or that. This is right in line with the traditional understanding of the soul as a self-mover. Perhaps the problem is supposed to be that in this case the secondary agent is causing something, namely, the motion of its own will, but is doing so without divine concurrence, which contradicts the doctrine of divine concurrence. But libertarians do not consider an agent’s freely choosing something to be an instance of an agent’s causing its own choice, for that would lead to an infinite regress of causes.112 Rather, an agent’s freely willing something is just an action of the agent, not an effect of the agent. So it is not as though some effect is produced by a secondary cause without God’s concurring. I do not, then, see that any insuperable problem exists here; on the contrary, the Molinist doctrine of simultaneous concurrence enjoys the considerable advantage of not making God the author of sin.
Helseth also charges that allowing that human beings endowed with libertarian freedom are sources of primary causality “reveal[s] a Manichaean tendency that … subverts the solas of the Reformation as well as the essential tenets of a biblical metaphysic.” The attempt to impugn Molinism/Arminianism through guilt by association with Manichaeism is just silly and unworthy of a serious scholar. One may as well try to impugn Helseth’s theory by associating it with Spinozism because of its universal determinism!
Is regarding human agents as primary causes theologically subversive? Helseth again has recourse to Muller, whose full statement is as follows: “If the salvation of human beings rests on divine foreknowledge, the human being is clearly regarded as the first and effective agent in salvation, and God is understood simply as the one who responds to an independent human action.”113 This charge seems to rest on a failure to distinguish carefully between simple foreknowledge and middle knowledge. If we think that God looks into the future and sees who will receive his grace and so, foreknowing this, ordains that it should happen, one could think that God is responding to an independent human action (though even that seems a stretch, since what he sees is a human response to his grace). But in a Molinist view, none of what God knows via middle knowledge actually exists. Such knowledge is purely hypothetical. God knows that if he were to offer some person S his grace under such-and-such circumstances, S would (or would not) respond. God would have such hypothetical knowledge even if he never created anything! So God is not responding to an independent human action, since no such action exists. In fact, theoretically, one could say that God looked at all the worlds of free creatures that were feasible for him to create, decided that they were all a bad lot, and so chose instead to create a deterministic world such as Helseth imagines, in which God’s grace is unilaterally and irresistibly imparted. How would that subvert sola gratia? The Reformed theologian must take sola gratia to entail that God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom is part of his free knowledge, a claim far removed from anything that could be justified by biblical exegesis. In that case, the only thing being subverted is the Reformed view.
The charge that essential tenets of biblical metaphysics would be subverted by regarding human agents as sources of primary causality appears to be merely a reiteration of Muller’s previous charge of ontological absurdity. But, as we have seen, Molinism affirms creatio ex nihilo (“creation out of nothing”), divine conservation, and concurrence. So what is the problem? I should have thought that turning human agents into mere instrumental causes, as Helseth does, rather than primary causes created and conserved by God subverts the biblical metaphysics of personhood and agency. I am pleased to learn that Charles Hodge repudiated the denial of primary causality to human persons that Helseth imagines to be essential to a biblical worldview.
In addition to these objections to a Molinist doctrine of concurrence, Helseth makes the passing claim that assuming human beings to be endowed with libertarian freedom is “essentially unintelligible,” citing an introductory essay by Robert Kane. The so-called intelligibility problem concerns how to distinguish libertarian choices from mere random or chance events. Helseth does not consider any of the several libertarian proposals, including Kane’s own solution, such as agent causation or noncausal reasons for action. Helseth’s verdict that libertarian free will is essentially unintelligible would be more impressive were it based on a considered weighing of these proposed solutions. I could not help but be somewhat amused when Helseth assures us that the doctrine of divine, causal determinism “does not trade in an understanding of human freedom that is familiar yet unintelligible” (like libertarian free will.) “Rather, it encourages believers to embrace an understanding of freedom that is ultimately inscrutable. “ This is supposed to be an advantage? Helseth’s view sacrifices familiarity with no gain in intelligibility.
Helseth’s scriptural and theologico-philosophical arguments for determinism are therefore inconclusive at best. What objections, then, might be raised against universal, divine, causal determinism? At least five come immediately to mind.
RESPONSE TO PAUL KJOSS HELSETH
Paul Kjoss Helseth presents the case for God’s omnicausality with grace and defends it with acumen. Rather than voicing his private philosophical opinions, he speaks as a representative of the Reformed tradition or simply in the name of “Reformed believers. “ He draws on the magisterial Reformed confessions of faith and catechisms and relies on well-respected representatives of this tradition, especially Herman Bavinck. Though Helseth’s essay by no means lacks creativity and individuality, it resonates with a confessional tone, supported by a chorus of the venerable dead. Helseth’s willingness to acknowledge that he stands on the shoulders of others imparts to his chapter a winsome quality quite unlike the other chapters in this volume. Helseth’s heavy reliance on the Reformed tradition reinforces his essay with all the strengths and weaknesses of that tradition.
All Things Serve Him
As careful readers of Helseth’s and my essays will discern, our views are closer to each other than they are to either of the other two essays in this volume. Hence, I owe it to the reader to clarify this agreement and point out the differences. I anticipate that some critics will dismiss Helseth’s essay with a wave of the hand as just one more example of “Calvinism. “ Every fair-minded theologian should admit, however, that caricature and insult do not suffice for analysis and criticism. One danger of speaking in the name of a tradition is that one can easily be dismissed with a label that has come to characterize that tradition in the popular mind. What is forgotten by the critics of “Calvinism” is that almost everything about God and providence preserved in the Reformed tradition goes back through the middle ages to Augustine, who studied the apostle Paul intensely. Calvin preserved but did not originate it. Though Roman Catholics of the Dominican order differentiate their views from Calvin in certain respects (e. g., the universal presence of sufficient grace), on the subject of providence they are almost of one mind.115 Hence, we cannot simply pass over Helseth’s essay as “Calvinist” boilerplate without displaying appalling ignorance of and shocking arrogance toward the tradition in which almost the entire Western church lived out its faith for centuries.
My fundamental agreement with Helseth’s view of providence does not derive from mutual loyalty to Calvin, much less to my intention to hew to the line of a confession of faith. As I see it, it is due to my being persuaded that the tradition of thinking about God’s providence that stretches back from Barth and Bavinck through Johann Heidegger, Calvin, Aquinas, and Bernard of Clairvaux to Augustine best preserves the biblical teaching about the greatness and goodness of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. The strength of Helseth’s essay derives from his reliance on this tradition. He correctly begins with the gratuitous character of God’s act of creation and the radically contingent nature of the creation. He rightly points to the intimate union between creation and providence, thereby showing the inconsistency of deism and its close relative, open theism. It is unthinkable that a world created from nothing escapes dependence on God at any point. And why would we want such “freedom” anyway? It is the glory and joy of a creature to depend on its creator and an even greater glory for that creature to will freely its dependence on its creator. I agree with Helseth that nothing escapes the will of God or defeats his power. His power, glory, and will are manifested in all creation, in everything that transpires. All things serve him. God is not limited to responding to what might happen as it happens, so that he must work toward a general end unknown in detail. Nor must God choose from the range of feasible worlds determined by what free creatures would do in every situation. No. As Helseth argues, we should believe that God simply does what he wills: no constraints, no trade-offs, and no defeats. If we find reconciling this faith with our own experience and reason difficult, we should not be surprised or disheartened. God is greater than our reason and “greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:20).
Finally, I agree with Helseth’s criticism of the notion of libertarian freedom. Despite all Molinist, Arminian, and open theist attempts to thwart its innate logical tendency, the idea of libertarian freedom implies that the “free agent” who enjoys it is an unmoved mover: a self-originating god. In this theory, God has nothing to do with the decisive act of the free agent. Moreover, the theory of libertarian freedom cannot be confined to matters of general providence. It relates directly to the debate about grace and justification that raged in the sixteenth century. This theory transforms God’s will to save into a mere offer subject to human validation. How ironic that some evangelical heirs of the Protestant Reformation would outdo their Roman Catholic contemporaries in making a sleepy church comfortable with the Semipelagianism that the Reformers risked life and limb to expose!
Critical Thoughts of a Christocentric Trinitarian
Despite my fundamental agreement with Helseth and the Reformed tradition on the theme of providence, I harbor a few reservations and perhaps some disagreements. Theologians in the Reformed tradition have sometimes given ammunition to their enemies by expressing themselves in infelicitous ways. Their use of such terms as “decree,” “determination,” and “cause” can give the impression of fatalism to those who do not understand what fatalism really is.116 It needs to be made clear that when used in reference to God these terms do not mean the same as when used of a human decree or determination or a worldly cause. Unlike God’s decree and its execution, a human decree and its execution are two different things and resonate with overtones of authoritarianism and coercion. Imagining a divine decree being given and then executed in time through means gives plausibility to the charge of fatalism. If, however, we understand the “decree” as the intentionality and final meaning of the gracious act of the loving God in creation, providence, and salvation, the impression of fatalism is replaced by a feeling of gratitude. How can one think of God’s loving gift as an impersonal fate?
The way we ordinarily use the word “cause” makes it almost impossible to think of God as “causing” freedom and free action. The results of an impersonal worldly cause are of like nature to the cause: impersonal. We do not usually speak of human beings causing things, except when the relation is indirect. For example, we do not say the builder caused the house to be built, or I caused my hand to wave, or John caused the cake to be baked. We say, rather, that Sam’s neglect caused the accident—an indirect relation. Persons do things, build things, or bake things. Hence, we should not say that God causes us to come into being, brings it about that we are cared for, causes us to be loved, or brings it about that we attain salvation. Instead, we should say that God creates us, cares for us, loves us, and saves us. Likewise, we should not say that God causes us to act.117 We should say that his presence in us gives us life, and his free activity in us activates our freedom. God’s action differs greatly from human action. Just as his love for us evokes our love in return, his righteousness in us becomes ours in him, and the touch of his holiness sanctifies us for his service; his freedom frees us for genuine freedom.
It is unfortunate that Reformed thinkers could contrive no better way to speak of God’s relation to sinful acts than to say that God is the “efficient” but “remote” cause of sin. Sin possesses no substance and, hence, can have no cause. It would be much better to differentiate clearly among the actor, the act, and the defectiveness of the act, so that we can affirm with confidence that God does not “cause” sin in any sense of the word. God gives no affirmation to the defects in the actor’s will and no being to the defects in the act. As I argue in my chapter, God gives being to everything good in the human act and brings it to its final result, at which point all defects are overcome and its final meaning is achieved.
In dealing with the problem of evil, Helseth falls into the standard pattern of terminology about evil. He says, “Particular evils happen because he [God] ordained that they would.” Helseth uses the expression “particular evils” here to mean painful events that contradict our natural desires rather than reserving the word “evil” for things God does not will.118 This ambiguity makes the Reformed view vulnerable to the criticism that God does things that “ought not to be done” or that God is the “author of sin.” To say that God ordains all events differs greatly from saying that God ordains all particular evils. It should be axiomatic for Christian theology that God does not ordain evil and never uses evil as a means to an end. The very notion of a “particular” event isolated from other events in creation and the one event of divine creation imposes a human perspective on divine action. Divine action, like the divine Actor, is one and simple. The history of providence and salvation is the unfolding history of God’s eternal “no” to evil, and the resurrection of Christ is the loudest expression of that “no.” The eschatological resurrection of the dead, furthermore, will be the final and definitive revelation of that divine “no,” and this final negation will be retroactive, applying to the whole history of creation. From the perspective of eternity, God’s negation of evil has never been mixed with “yes” or “maybe.” To pronounce a particular event “evil” is to usurp God’s role as Judge and to pronounce final judgment before the time (1 Cor. 4:5).
Finally, I think that the Reformed view of divine providence is insufficiently christocentric and Trinitarian, a characteristic it shares with much Western theology written since the Middle Ages.119 Helseth argues that divine omnicausality deserves careful examination because “it encourages us to think about the meaning of the world and everything in it in overtly theocentric, as opposed to covertly anthropocentric, terms. “ Helseth here sets theocentric theology in opposition to anthropocentric theology in a way that fails to take into account the reconciliation of God and humanity in Christ. Theologizing about God as the all-determining reality or the primary cause or the world sovereign tends toward abstraction and speculation. Speaking about the divine decree or creation or predestination or providence without constant reference to Christ does not allow us to differentiate sufficiently the Christian view from pagan variants of these ideas. Asserting merely that God does everything for his own glory might lead us to believe that divine glory could as easily be manifested by damning as by saving, by destroying as by creating, by harming as by healing. Such abstract theocentrism neglects the crucial fact that God showed us the true nature of his glory by sending his Son to die on a cross for us sinners. On the cross, God’s infinite dignity emerged as the self-giving love that binds the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. And the creature’s dignity and freedom come to light in the divine and human self-giving of the Son to the Father in utter trust. Here God’s glory, sovereignty, justice, freedom, and love are reconciled; indeed, it is revealed that they were never in tension and that God is eternally like Jesus Christ. Christian theology should think from a center in Christ back to creation and the decree and forward to the eschaton. Because of the revelation of God in Christ, we confess that God is Father, Son, and Spirit and that everything that comes from God is accomplished from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit. This conviction should animate and permeate all Christian theology, including the doctrine of providence.
RESPONSE TO PAUL KJOSS HELSETH
Iappreciate Helseth’s clear presentation of the classical Reformed perspective on divine providence. I especially admire the integrity of Helseth’s essay. While some contemporary Reformed writers attempt to soften the doctrine of divine determinism by saying that God merely “permits” or “allows” sin and evil, Helseth is forthright in acknowledging his belief in divine “omnicausality.” With Bavinck, Helseth believes that every single thing that exists, including evil, does so “totally from, through, and to God.” He courageously concedes, “The ultimate explanation for everything that is, is found in the will of the one who wills to sustain what is from moment to moment to moment.” God thus actively wills, ordains, and, in some mysterious sense, even causes all that comes to pass, including sin and evil I appreciate such candor.
Having said this, I must candidly state that Helseth’s beliefs about the nature of God and divine providence are about as antithetical to my own as I can imagine any views being. I will cluster my responses to Helseth’s essay around four issues: his critique of the open view, his understanding of God’s greatness, the mysterious “in such a way” clause, and the problem of evil.120
Critique of the Open View
Helseth believes the open view is “truly contemptible,” because this God “is a capricious being who cannot be trusted to work in every situation in a way that maximizes good and minimizes evil for his creatures. “ He concludes this because he believes that the God of open theism is able to intervene to override free will and prevent evil whenever he wants to; he simply chooses not to much of the time. He alleges that in the open view when God refrains from intervening, it is not “because [he has] an overarching purpose or plan,” nor “because the self-determining freedom of wicked moral agents is irrevocable, nor because their suffering was ordained for a greater good.” It is rather “because God was simply not inclined to intervene coercively on their behalf and this is why their suffering is entirely pointless.”
I completely agree with Helseth that the view of God he just ascribed to open theists is “truly contemptible” (though perhaps less so than the view that God ordains all evil). Unfortunately, this portrait of a capricious God has nothing in common with the actual view that open theists espouse. For starters, it’s not at all clear to me why Helseth would claim that I and other open theists believe that God is “clearly able” to intervene to prevent evil whenever he wants to. While I and most other advocates of the open view grant that God has the sheer power to do whatever he wants, we nevertheless argue that he cannot do whatever he wants given the fact that he chose to create a cosmos populated with free agents. To the extent that God gives humans and angels say-so, he by definition limits his own unilateral say-so.
Because the open view holds that God gives agents genuine say-so, it can make better sense of the urgency and power associated with prayer in Scripture than alternative views can. Things really do hang in the balance on whether or not people pray, and prayer really does change things. By God’s own sovereign design, he needs humans to align their hearts with his to see aspects of his will being done “on earth as it is in heaven.”121Conversely, when God fails to intervene, it is precisely because “the self-determining freedom of wicked moral agents is irrevocable.” I am puzzled as to how Helseth overlooked this fundamental point, especially since he several times cites the work in which I most thoroughly develop my thoughts on the irrevocability of free will (Satan and the Problem of Evil).
Along similar lines, Helseth clearly has not understood the open view when he imagines that we deny that God has “an overarching purpose or plan,” which is why he concludes that for open theists “suffering is entirely pointless. “ Just because God faces a future partly comprised of possibilities does not mean that he has no “overarching purpose or plan. “ The truth is that open theists absolutely affirm that God has an overarching plan; we simply deny that God needs to ordain or foreknow as a certainty the future free decisions of agents in order to have a plan as to how he will weave every one of our possible free decisions into his “overarching plan. “ Helseth’s charge that suffering is pointless in the open view is thus without merit.
Also without merit is Helseth’s caricature of the God of open theism making moment-by-moment decisions whether he will honor or override free will to prevent a person’s suffering based on nothing more than whether he feels “inclined to intervene coercively on their behalf. “ As I shall argue more fully in my contributing chapter, we can think of the open model of providence along the lines of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s book.122 As the author of the Choose Your Own Adventure creation, God determined the scope of what would be settled and the scope of what would remain open for each of the possible story lines comprising creation. God also decided, prior to creation, what his response would be to each possible event within each possible story line, thereby determining how he would weave each possible event into his overarching plan should the possible event come to pass. On top of this, God is lovingly at work, moment to moment, to maximize good and minimize evil as much as possible given that he must work around the irrevocable free will of humans and angels. While the God of open theism obviously does not microcontrol all that comes to pass, it is also obvious that he is miles removed from the “contemptible” and “capricious being who cannot be trusted to work in every situation in a way that maximizes good and minimizes evil for his creatures” in whom Helseth imagines open theists believe.
The Greatness of God
Along with the classical Calvinistic tradition, Helseth defines God’s greatness largely in terms of his control. To the extent that one views others as having a measure of say-so over and against God, therefore, one diminishes God’s greatness, according to this view. Hence, for example, Helseth (quoting Warfield) insists that God would be a little “godling” if he were “subject to forces acting ‘independently … and outside of his teleological control.’ “ Again citing Warfield, Helseth argues that any conception of God granting freedom to creatures makes God “govern himself by the course of events,” and this “actually overthrow[s] the whole theistic conception, and enthrone[s] the ‘course of events’ as the real ruler of the world.” Two points may be made in response.
First, I confess I am unable to grasp the remarkable leap in logic from God granting some measure of autonomous power to agents, on the one hand, to God being “govern[ed] … by the course of events” and the “course of events” becoming “the real ruler of the world,” on the other. How does that follow? Why would God’s lordship be threatened if he gave some measure of say-so to independent agents? What warrants this sort of all-or-nothing thinking?123 To the contrary, everything in our own experience as well as all that we have learned about the world from science over the last century suggests that reality is a balance between order and chaos, stable structures and dynamic processes, predictable and spontaneous events, settled realities and freedom.124 In this light, there is simply no reason to assume that God must control everything in the world for him to remain in overall control of the world.
So far as I can see, this is precisely the sort of control that Scripture ascribes to God. Yes, angels and humans can sin by rejecting God’s plans and, to some extent, by thwarting his will for themselves and others. Yet God remains the sovereign Lord of history who confidently works toward his creational objectives, using even the evil actions of rebels to accomplish his purposes. And because he is infinitely intelligent and can anticipate possible events as effectively as predetermined events, he does not need to ordain evil events in order effectively to use them in this fashion.
Second, and most important, while I do not find it at all surprising that pagans typically define a deity’s greatness by his or her level of control over others — humans, after all, have worshiped power since the dawn of history—I am nonplussed as to why followers of Jesus would ever think this way. At the center of the New Testament is the shockingly beautiful revelation that Jesus, the crucified Son of God, reveals what God is really like. Jesus is the very “radiance of God’s glory” and the one and only “exact representation of his being” (hypostasis) (Heb. 1:3). To understand the true nature of God, we are to look nowhere else but to Jesus (John 14:7 – 9). If our thinking about God was unwaveringly fixed on Jesus, I honestly cannot see how we could ever conclude that God’s greatness is primarily about how much control he exerts over others. To the contrary, in Jesus we discover that God’s greatness is most clearly revealed in the foolishness and the weakness of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18 – 25). God’s greatness is most magnificently displayed in Jesus’ willingness not to use his power and authority to defeat his enemies but instead, out of love, to allow them to crucify him (Matt. 26:53). God’s greatness is most profoundly revealed in his relentless, other-oriented, self-sacrificial, humble love (1 John 3:16; 4:8). Next to this breathtakingly beautiful revelation of the unfathomable greatness of the God who is love, I submit that the portrait of a God who needs or desires to microcontrol everything to preserve or manifest his lordship is the real “godling.”
The Mysterious “In Such a Way” Clause
As is uniformly the case with Christian divine determinists, Helseth appeals to the mysterious “in such a way” clause to which I allude in my contributing chapter. He says, for example, that God “determines all things in such a way that ‘the real activity of second causes’ is both affirmed and maintained, and for this reason [God] is neither the ‘sole cause’ of everything that transpires in the universe that he has made, nor is he the author of evil.”125 He repeatedly declares (usually quoting others) that, though God is the ultimate cause of all that is, God “ ‘concurs with all second causes and especially with the human will’ while simultaneously leaving the ‘contingency and liberty of the will … unimpaired.’.”126 Hence, everything happens in strict accordance with God’s predestined plan, yet in such a way that God remains all-holy for predestining evil, while agents are morally responsible for carrying out the evil God predestined them to do.
To his credit, Helseth acknowledges that this is “ultimately inscrutable,” yet he justifies embracing this impervious “mystery” by contending that the God-creation relationship is sui generis. Since it is utterly unique, Helseth concludes, there is nothing to which we can compare this relationship, and thus we must simply accept it for the incomprehensible mystery that it is The primary problem with this argument, however, is that words have meaning only insofar as they have some connection, if only analogically, with our experience. Hence, if the God-creation relationship were utterly unique, to the point that no analogy for it could be found, we could say nothing meaningful about it. Yet while all orthodox theologians throughout history have agreed that the God-world relationship is unique, none has denied the meaningfulness of analogically speaking about it. And Helseth seems to agree with this consensus, since he does, after all, have a good bit to say about the God-creation relationship.
This brings us to a problem at the heart of Helseth’s deterministic theology. Neither Helseth nor any other advocate of divine determinism of whom I am aware has provided an analogy that renders meaningful the kind of God-creation relationship divine determinists want to defend. And until they do, I honestly cannot see how we can ascribe meaning to, let alone grant the truthfulness of, the mysterious “in such a way” clause. So far as I can see, the phrase amounts to nothing more than a restatement of the unintelligibility of the position being defended.127 Determinists can passionately stress the reality of “secondary causes” and the importance of “concurrence” all they like, but until we are given some means of ascribing coherent meaning to the “in such a way” clause, these “explanations” simply reexpress the unintelligibility of this view.
For this reason, I frankly had trouble ascribing meaning to most of Helseth’s deterministic explanations. For example, Helseth notes that God is always “working concurrently with created things ‘to cause them to act as they do.’.”128 But what can this possibly mean if God is already exhaustively controlling all “created things"? What is there left for God to work “concurrently with” in order to “cause them to act as they do"? Unless there is some over-and-against aspect to “created things” prior to God’s working concurrently with them — which there is not if all “created things” are exhaustively determined by God from the start—then there is no “concurrence"; there is simply an “occurrence,” and it is all God’s.
Similarly, Helseth insists, “Secondary causes are and remain distinct from God, the primary cause.” We are confidently informed that this happens in such a way that “the primary cause ‘confers reality’ on secondary causes” such that the secondary causes “exist ‘solely as a result of the first.’ “ But what can it possibly mean to claim that secondary causes “remain distinct” from the primary cause when we are also told that the primary cause that “confers reality” on the secondary cause exhaustively determines it? If y (secondary cause) is 100 percent determined by x (primary cause), how is y not simply another name for x? Unless there is some over-and-against quality of y in relation to x, then, so far as I can determine, the claim that y “remains distinct” from x is merely verbal.
Related to this, Helseth contends that the “true view” of providence stands midway between the Scylla of deism and the Charybdis of pantheism. I agree with him, but despite his sincere desire to avoid it, I cannot see how Helseth’s own view can logically keep from being sucked into the Charybdis. If the world is 100 percent determined by God, its “primary cause,” then, so far as I can see, the distinction between God and the world is merely verbal.129 Of course, I am certain Helseth and others will emphatically, and with complete sincerity, insist that God exhaustively determines the world in such a way that the world remains ontologically distinct from God and pantheism is altogether avoided. And at this point I can only mutter, once again, What does that mysterious phrase mean?
The Problem of Evil
As I noted above, I applaud Helseth’s candor in frankly confessing his belief that “particular evils happen because [God] ordained that they would” and that “the ultimate explanation for everything that is, is found in the will of the one who wills to sustain what is from moment to moment to moment. “ Yet my respect for Helseth’s integrity does not lessen how profoundly disturbing I find his position.
We need to think concretely about the implications of this teaching. Imagine for a moment: The innocent, happy world of a charming and witty nine-year-old girl is instantly transformed into an unthinkable nightmare when she is kidnapped by a demented, sadistic pedophile. For years she is imprisoned in a dark cell while being tortured and raped daily. The psychological hell her parents descend into as they for years ponder their beloved daughter’s unknown fate is as diabolically dark as the hell experienced by their daughter.
Based on Helseth’s account, this is all exactly as God ordained it to be! Every single perverted impulse the sadistic pedophile has, every sadistic action he afflicts on his tortured victim, every sobbing plea and terrified scream that comes out of this abused child’s mouth, and every anguished speculation of what might be happening to their daughter that slowly erodes the sanity of this child’s tormented parents — all of this is exactly as God wills it to be, “moment to moment to moment. “ And as is the case with all evil, we are told that every horrific detail of this macabre episode is willed by God “for the good of his children and the glory of his name.” The suggestion frankly leaves me dumbfounded.
On top of this, Helseth insists that God is always at work to maximize good and minimize evil. Given that everything is from the start exactly as God wills it to be, it is not clear what it means to claim that God works at maximizing or minimizing anything. The more important point, however, is that, when combined with an omnicausal understanding of providence, this conviction forces the awkward conclusion that every single horrific detail of this macabre episode is maximally good! Indeed, since the all-good God is at every moment maximizing the good while exhaustively determining every detail of this episode, we must accept the ghoulish conclusion that God’s glory as well as maximal goodness would have been shortchanged if the pedophile had tortured this girl less viciously and less frequently than he did, and if this victim had shed one less tear and uttered one less scream than she did.
At this point, it seems to me that the concepts of “good” and “evil” have lost all meaning. I am left wondering, If this is what an all-good God ordains, what would an evil god ordain? The very fact that the divine omnicausal model of providence makes this a plausible question is perhaps the most fatal objection against it.
1. For examples of minor historical discrepancies, see John Selby, Stonewall Jackson as Military Commander (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999), 25 – 26.
2. Robert Lewis Dabney, “True Courage,” in Discussions of Robert Lewis Dabney, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), 459.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 457.
5. Ibid.
6. According to the Westminster standards: “God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy” (“Of Providence,” 5.1, in The Westminster Confession of Faith [Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1994], 33 – 34).
"God’s works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures; ordering them, and all their actions, to his own glory” (“The Larger Catechism,” q. 18, in The Westminster Confession of Faith, 137).
"God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions” (“The Shorter Catechism,” q. 11, in The Westminster Confession of Faith, 289).
7. B. B. Warfield, “Predestination,” in Biblical Doctrines, vol. 2 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (1929; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 21.
8. B. B. Warfield, “Some Thoughts on Predestination,” in Selected Shorter Writings, ed. John E. Meeter, 2 vols. (1970 – 73; repr., Phillipsburg, N J.: P&R, 2001), 1:105.
9. Warfield, “The Significance of the Confessional Doctrine of the Decree,” in Shorter Writings, 1:94 According to Warfield, those who insist that God rules the universe while simultaneously granting the existence of causes that can act independently and outside of his control in fact are “deny[ing] in detail what they [are] affirm[ing] in the mass” (ibid.). Among those who do this are not only those who insist that the eternal destinies of particular individuals are ultimately determined not by God but by the individuals themselves (cf. ibid., 100), but also those who “asseverate that though God had foreordained all that would come to pass, this was only because in his infinite wisdom he was able to forecast the future perfectly; because he thoroughly knew all the causes in operation, and could calculate their issues; and on this ground could foretell what would come to pass, and so ordain it” (ibid., 99). Conceiving of providence in this second sense betrays a deistic tendency that mars “the purity of our theism” just as surely as the first sense does, Warfield argues, for it “dethrone[s] God as the governor of the universe” (ibid.). Indeed, it makes him “rather govern himself by the course of events; and so under color of affirming the primal theistic implicate of purposive action, actually overthrow[s] the whole theistic conception, and enthrone[s] the ‘course of events’ as the real ruler of the world” (ibid.).
10. Warfield, “Predestination,” 45, 9, 45
11. Ibid., 62, 56, 62
12. Ibid., 8, 9. Please note that although not all Reformed believers endorse the primary/ secondary distinction, nevertheless it is, as far as I can tell, the majority position in the Reformed camp.
13. Warfield, “Confessional Doctrine,” 98. Note that for philosophers like Keith Yandell, it is “dubious” for monotheists who are determinists to maintain that there really is more than “one agent” or cause in the universe (Keith E. Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction [New York: Routledge, 1999], 339; for Yandell’s extended argument, see 303 – 40). Despite what philosophers like Yandell would have us believe, Reformed believers are not persuaded that “omnicausality” necessarily entails “monocausality “ According to Warfield, “When the [Westminster] Confession was written as well as now, there were men who were accustomed to asseverate that to affirm that God had freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass were to declare God the sole cause operative in the universe, to destroy the freedom of the human will, and indeed the reality of all second causes, and to reduce all things to the control of a blind necessity or fate Accordingly the Confession adds the caveat, that God’s foreordination does not make him the author of sin, nor offer violence to the will of the creature, nor take away (but rather establish) the liberty or contingency of second causes In other words, the Confession guards its readers against being misled into supposing that the divine government of the universe according to an eternal plan excludes the administration of that government through instruments; and protects the reality and real efficiency of all second causes, free and necessary alike, as the proximate producers of the effects that take place in the world, while affirming the reality and real efficiency of the first cause as the determiner of the course of events in accordance with the primal plan” (Warfield, “Confessional Doctrine,” 98 – 99).
14. According to John Frame, there are two senses in which the phrase “author of evil” can be understood In the first sense, the phrase “connotes not only causality of evil, but also blame for it. To author evil is to do it” (John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God: A Theology of Lordship [Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2002], 181). The second sense suggests that God’s relationship to the world is like that of an author to his story Conceiving of God’s relationship to evil in this sense, Frame suggests, provides “a way of seeing that God is not to be blamed for the sin of his creatures,” for not only does he transcend and rule over the created order much like an author transcends and rules over the world of his story, but more important, he is “the covenant Lord” who, as the author of his story, has prerogatives that, while always consistent with his character, nevertheless “are far greater than ours,” and for this reason he is “not required to defend himself against charges of injustice” (ibid., 181, 180, 181) This analogy and the sense of authorship that it commends will perhaps make more sense when coupled with the typical Reformed distinction “between God as the ‘remote cause’ and human agency as the ‘proximate cause’ “ of sin (ibid., 176). While Reformed believers typically insist that only the “proximate” cause is culpable for sin because only the proximate cause is “a doer of sin” (ibid., 288), they nevertheless acknowledge that the mechanics of how God can be the efficient cause of sin without actually doing, and thus being culpable for, sin is inscrutable Calvin, Frame argues, “uses the proximate-remote distinction,” not to demonstrate “why God is guiltless,” but merely “to distinguish between the causality of God and that of creatures, and therefore to state that the former is always righteous” (ibid., 177) Thus, while the proximate-remote distinction is useful because it “stat[es] who is to blame for evil” and helps us to conceptualize divine authorship, it does not in itself provide a comprehensive solution to the problem of evil (ibid., 179). As such, it too calls us to trust the promises of God, all of which “find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20).
15. Archibald Alexander Hodge, The Confession of Faith (1869; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 91.
16. Warfield, “Predestination,” 9.
17. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:604.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid For Bavinck, God is related to his creatures as the primary cause that works through secondary causes As such, secondary causes are the “formal” causes of everything that transpires See note 25 on the next page.
21. Note that the active nature of God’s providential control extends even to the manner in which he permits sin According to Frame, God permits nothing passively, but his permission is “an efficacious permission” (Frame, Doctrine of God, 178). But what does this mean? Francis Turretin suggests that “this permission must not be conceived negatively, as if it was a mere keeping back (anergia) or cessation of his will and providence in evil works.… But it must be conceived positively and affirmatively; not simply that God does not will to hinder sin (which is an otiose negation), but that he wills not to hinder (which is an efficacious affirmation) Thus the permission involves a positive act of the secret will by which God designedly and willingly determined not to hinder sin, although he may be said to nill it as to the revealed will of approbation In this sense, our divines do not refuse to employ the word ‘permission’ with the Scriptures. And if at any time they reject it … they understand it in the Pelagian sense of otiose ‘permission’ which takes away from God his own right and sets up the idol of free will in its place” (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed James T Dennison Jr, trans George Musgrave Giger, 3 vols. [Phillipsburg, N J.: P&R, 1992 – 97], 1:516 – 17).
22. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:501.
23. Ibid., 1:501, 502.
24. Ibid., 1:502 According to Turretin, those who hold that the “influx of the first cause” is “indifferent to this action or the contrary” do so “principally for two reasons: one is to vindicate God from the causality of sin; the other to establish the liberty and indifference (adiaphoria) of the human will in all acts (especially in conversion) and to reconcile it with divine providence” (ibid.).
25. Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 142. Bavinck concludes his discussion of concurrence with this helpful summary: “In relation to God the secondary causes can be compared to instruments (Isa. 10:15; 13:5; Jer. 50:25; Acts 9:15; Rom. 9:20 – 23); in relation to their effects and products they are causes in a true sense. And precisely because the primary and the secondary cause do not stand and function dualistically on separate tracks, but the primary works through the secondary, the effect that proceeds from the two is one and the product is one. There is no division of labor between God and his creature, but the same effect is totally the effect of the primary cause as well as totally the effect of the proximate cause. The product is also in the same sense totally the product of the primary as well as totally the product of the secondary cause. But because the primary cause and the secondary cause are not identical and differ essentially, the effect and product are in reality totally the effect and product of the two causes, to be sure, but formally they are only the effect and product of the secondary cause” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:614 – 15).
26. Warfield, “Predestination,” 62.
27. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:605.
28. Ibid.
29. Warfield, “Confessional Doctrine,” 95
30. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:605.
31. David B. Burrell, “Creation, Metaphysics, and Ethics,” Faith and Philosophy 18, no. 2 (April 2001): 207.
32. Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 18, 19, 33.
33. Ibid., 19
34. Ibid., 33
35. Burrell, “Creation, Metaphysics, and Ethics,” 206.
36. David B. Burrell, “Creator/Creatures Relation: ‘The Distinction’ vs. ‘Onto-Theology,’” Faith and Philosophy 25, no. 2 (April 2008): 179.
37. Ibid., 184.
38. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, 34.
39. Burrell, “Creation, Metaphysics, and Ethics,” 205.
40. Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, 34.
41. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:592. Those with deistic tendencies presume that God endows secondary causes with certain capacities and then grants them a measure of autonomy, that is, the capacity to govern themselves.
42. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (1860; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 259.
43. Ibid., 259, 260.
44. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:613.
45. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260. According to Bavinck, “Just as providence is a power and an act, so it is also an almighty and everywhere present power God is immanently present with his being in all creatures His providence extends to all creatures; all things exist in him” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:606).
46. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:592 It is also, Bavinck notes, “an oxymoron” (ibid.).
47. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:605, 604 Denying that created beings have the ability to “originate action” is founded, thinkers like Charles Hodge curiously maintain, on the “arbitrary and false assumption” that “the power of spontaneous action” must be denied if “the absolute control of God over created beings” is to be maintained (ibid., 1:604) Hodge’s repudiation of concurrence is “curious” because it seems uncharacteristically confused and confusing While Hodge repudiates concurrence on the one hand because he wants to maintain that we “originate our own acts,” he insists on the other hand that the power to “originate our own acts” is “not inconsistent” with being “moved and induced to exert our ability to act by considerations addressed to our reason or inclinations, or by the grace of God” (ibid.). But how, one wonders, is this all that different from Reformed thinkers who endorse the doctrine of concurrence? For example, Bavinck, as we have seen, embraces the doctrine of concurrence, yet he rejects the notion that secondary causes “are merely instruments, organs, inanimate automata, but they are genuine causes with a nature, vitality, spontaneity, manner of working, and law of their own” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:614). Given my work elsewhere on the Princeton theologians, it pains me to say that this might be one place where Scottish realism got the better of Hodge, for his repudiation of concurrence, while informed by a number of measured considerations, is also informed by an appeal to the principles of common sense: the “arbitrary and false assumption” that informs the doctrine of concurrence — namely, that creatures cannot “originate action” — is false, Hodge argues, because it “contradicts the consciousness of men” (Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:604).
48. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:592.
49. Ibid., 2:605 – 6. According to Turretin, “As man depends upon God as to essence and life, so he must depend upon him as to the actions and movements of his soul For to pretend that man is independent in will and action is to make him independent in being because whatever he is in acting such he is in being” (Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:500).
50. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:605.
51. Ibid., 2:607, 605, 607.
+++++++++++++52. Ibid, 2:608, 605, 608.
53. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260.
54. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:608, 614, 607. Bavinck’s understanding of “continuous creation” is not intended, he argues, “to erase the distinction between creation and providence, as [Charles] Hodge for one fears.…Creation and providence are not identical. If providence meant a creating anew every moment, creatures would also have to be produced out of nothing every moment. In that case, the continuity, connectedness, and ‘order of causes’ would be totally lost, and there would be no development or history. All created beings would then exist in appearance only and be devoid of all independence, freedom, and responsibility. God himself would be the cause of sin. Although many theologians called providence a ‘continuous creation,’ they by no means meant to erase the difference between the two. They all regarded providence rather as simultaneously also an act of causing creatures to persist in their existence, as a form of preservation that presupposes creation” (ibid., 2:607).
55. Ibid., 2:608.
56. Ibid.
57. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 261.
58. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:614.
59. Ibid.
60. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 261 – 62. Obviously, the phrase “upholding all things in being and action” in proposition six above is loaded. For Hodge and Reformed believers generally, it entails “the universal, efficient control of God, whereby … he determines and disposes of all actions and events according to his sovereign purpose” (ibid., 268).
61. See, e.g., David Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (Mukilteo, Wash.: WinePress; Escondido, Calif: Main Entry Editions, 1997); Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (1977; repr., New York: Noonday Press, 1998).
62. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (1923; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 62. See also idem, “My Idea of God,” in My Idea of God (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1927), 39 – 50.
63. Warfield, “Predestination,” 103.
64. Ibid. Note that both pantheism and deism magnify the importance of the self While deism’s magnification is more obvious [Bavinck insists that for deists, “the salvation of humanity consists not in communion with God but in separation from him In principle, Deism is always the same; it deactivates God, but one Deist will walk that road further than another A Deist is a person who in his short life has not found the time to become an atheist,” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:603)], pantheism’s magnification is subtler. According to Warfield, pantheists regard God as “a universal force acting uniformly” (“Confessional Doctrine,” 94). God, in other words, acts not as a personal being but as “an amorphic force by a uniform pressure made effectual here, there, or elsewhere by differences in the object on which it impinges” (ibid.). As such, given the uniform nature of this “divine influence,” the magnification of the self is found in the role the self plays in responding to the influence: “What happens to the individual … is determined, not by the ‘divine influence’ which plays alike on all, but by something in himself which makes him respond more or less to the ‘divine influence’ common to all” (B. B. Warfield, “What Fatalism Is,” in Shorter Writings, 1:394).
65. Thomas H. McCall, “We Believe in God’s Sovereign Goodness: A Rejoinder to John Piper,” Trinity Journal, 29 ns, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 246.
66. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:503.
67. Richard A Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice: Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response,” in The Grace of God, the Bondage of the Will, vol. 2 of Historical and Theological Perspectives on Calvinism, ed. Thomas A. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 265.
68. Ibid.
69. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:511.
70. In other words, the methodological starting point for our consideration should be revelation rather than reason. Scott Oliphint and Lane Tipton wisely note that “if one wants to know about God’s omniscience or his eternity, if one wants to think deeply about God and his relationship to the world, if one wants to do apologetics, the first place to look is to Scripture, and then to those theologians who faithfully articulate its teachings. Philosophy, even Christian philosophy, has a long and resolute history of turning its back on a consistent Reformed theology It, therefore, has not fared well with regard to theological (or philosophical-theological) discussions” (Introduction to Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics, ed. K. Scott Oliphint and Lane G. Tipton [Phillipsburg, N J.: P&R, 2007], 2 – 3).
71. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:511.
72. Ibid. Note that for Turretin, this mystery is an occasion for praise: “But how these two things can consist with each other, no mortal can in this life perfectly understand. Nor should it seem a cause for wonder, since he has a thousand ways (to us incomprehensible) of concurring with our will, insinuating himself into us and turning our hearts, so that by acting freely as we will, we still do nothing besides the will and determination of God. Thus here deservedly, if anywhere else, we may exclaim: ‘O the depth … how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’ (Rom. 11:33 KJV)” (ibid.).
73. Ibid., 1:512.
74. For an extended discussion of the biblical data that establishes “that God controls nature, history, and individuals (including their free decisions) in minute detail” (Frame, Doctrine of God, 287), see Frame, The Doctrine of God, 47-79.
75. Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice,” 266 – 67.
76. Ibid., 267.
77. Ibid.
78. I am indebted to Walter Schultz for characterizing in this fashion the problem with libertarian freedom Note that Schultz does not suggest that libertarian freedom is Manichaean (indeed, he argues for the conceptual possibility of a restricted form of libertarianism himself), but that the way it is advocated can exhibit a Manichaean tendency In personal correspondence that is cited with permission, Schultz clarifies: “It goes without saying that most Protestants and Catholics believe that God is sovereign and good, that creation is ex nihilo and that agents will be held responsible by God The challenge for those who equate genuine freedom with libertarian freedom is to logically and scripturally give an account of how creatures that are ontologically dependent on God from one moment to the next can at the same time possess a measure of functional autonomy. That is, the challenge is to give an explanation—not merely an assertion, and not merely a description of a libertarian free action—but an explanation of how a created agent, who is ontologically dependent on God at every moment of its existence (if neurological correlates count and if Planck physics is correct, then every moment must be a Planck moment 10–43 seconds), can ever be functionally independent Reformed thinkers who claim that the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is ‘inscrutable’ don’t think that such an explanation can be given Of course, this is not because they think that these notions are contradictory The set of notions, sovereignty, goodness, creation ex nihilo, and responsibility, while paradoxical, is consistent, they believe, provided that the content of each notion is grounded in the clear teaching of scripture.
“Here is the main point: some Christian theists, including most Reformed thinkers, would rather live with inscrutability and emphasize God’s sovereignty and goodness than to diminish its content in ways apparently contrary to scripture By contrast, when some advocates of libertarianism — because of their commitment to libertarianism — seem willing to diminish the scriptural content of the notion of God’s sovereignty and its scripturally explicit implications, they seem (in effect) to treat created agents as ontologically independent sources of causality, and they do this despite the fact that they lack an account of the mechanism of libertarian free choice One feature of the Manichaeism opposed by Augustine was its commitment to more than one ontologically independent source of causality While our semi-Pelagian and Arminian brothers and sisters would reject Manichaeism, some of them seem to exhibit a tendency to prefer one of its essential components in place of a more robust biblical view of God’s sovereignty” (Walter J. Schultz in an email to Paul Kjoss Helseth, November 1, 2010).
79. For a brief summary of what is called “the intelligibility question,” see Robert Kane, “Introduction: The Contours of Contemporary Free Will Debates,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 22 – 23.
80. For a helpful discussion of the “power to do otherwise,” see Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 56 – 57.
81. Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice,” 266.
82. Ibid., 266, 267. If the “scandal” of the Reformed worldview “is that ultimately the logical problems posed cannot be fully resolved,” the dirty little secret of the Arminian world- view is that the independence that the Arminian system requires “cannot be exegetically vindicated” (Thomas R. Schreiner, “Does Scripture Teach Prevenient Grace in the Wesleyan Sense?” in Schreiner and Ware, Grace of God, Bondage of the Will, 2:381, 382). While the recognition that those who are dead in sin and without the ability to pursue Christ apart from regenerating grace is essential to the Reformed worldview and explicitly taught throughout Scripture (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 1 and 2), the prevenient grace that rescues Arminianism from Pelagianism and makes the system work “is a philosophical imposition of a certain world view upon the Scriptures” (ibid., 2:381).
83. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 163 n. 27.
84. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, vol. 21 of Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. and ed. John Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 297.
85. For a much fuller exposition of the polemic in the forthcoming paragraphs, see Paul Kjoss Helseth, “On Divine Ambivalence: Open Theism and the Problem of Particular Evils,” JETS 44 (September 2001): 493 – 511; idem, “What Is at Stake in the Openness Debate? The Trustworthiness of God and the Foundation of Hope,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, Ill : Crossway, 2003), 275 – 307; idem, “Neo-Molinism: A Traditional-Openness Rapprochement?” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 7, no 3 (Fall 2003): 56 – 73 While I suspect that Dr Boyd will want to challenge my characterization of his views for, if nothing else, “a lack of nuance that is appalling,” I must confess that I do not see how he can gainsay the substance of my critique, for I do not see how everything that I have argued about the God of open theism does not follow from Dr Boyd’s writings in general and his treatment of Peter in particular. Obviously, Dr. Boyd does not owe me an explanation, but I would appreciate knowing how I am misrepresenting his views, if in fact I am.
86. Jason A Nicholls, “Openness and Inerrancy: Can They Be Compatible?” JETS 45 (December 2002): 640 According to Nicholls, the standard critiques of the open view of providence tend to presume that openness theologians cannot affirm that God is the sovereign Lord of history because their commitment to the concept of libertarian freedom is unlimited This presumption, Nicholls argues, is based on “a misconception about the openness view,” namely, that openness theologians are unwilling “to make room in their system for the possibility of periodic instances of divine intervention, perhaps even to the point of controlling, overwhelming or overriding libertarian freedom on occasion” (ibid, 631, 647) The God of open theism in fact retains providential control over the unfolding course of cosmic history, Nicholls contends, because he is willing “to control the final outcome of a partly unforeseen future by means of specific, periodic, unilateral intervention, something that might be called his select determinism” (ibid., 640).
87. Gregory A. Boyd, “A Response to John Piper,” May 4, 1998. www.bgc.bethel.edu/4know/response.htm. Accessed September 3, 1999.
88. Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 302 n. 18.
89. Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 153.
90. Gregory A. Boyd and Edward K. Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor, 1994), 47.
91. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 181 – 84.
92. Ibid., 16.
93. Ibid., 429.
94. Ibid., 232 – 33.
95. K. Scott Oliphint, “Jonathan Edwards on Apologetics: Reason and the Noetic Effects of Sin,” in The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards: American Religion and the Evangelical Tradition, ed. D. G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 138 – 39.
96. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 2nd ed., ed. William Edgar (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2007), 58.
97. Herschel Baker, The Wars of Truth: Studies in the Decay of Christian Humanism in the Earlier Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), 305, 5.
98. Richard Pratt Jr., Every Thought Captive: A Study Manual for the Defense of Christian Truth (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 1979), 14.
99. Warfield, “Predestination,” 108.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:594.
103. Walter J. Schultz, “ ‘No-Risk’ Libertarian Freedom: A Refutation of the Free-Will Defense,” Philosophia Christi 10, no. 1 (2008): 165 – 66, emphasis added.
104. Ibid., emphasis added. According to Schultz, “Christians are divided over how to understand apparently pointless suffering at the hands of others. Was it because God couldn’t prevent it or God wouldn’t prevent it? The Free Will Defense and related theodicies take the first view, postulating that such sufferings are the unavoidable consequences of creature-freedom. They hold that in order to achieve his purposes in creation, God had to grant libertarian free will, because such purposes involve a creature’s freely choosing to do good. The idea is that were God always to prevent every creature from choosing to do evil he could not achieve his purposes. ‘"No-Risk” Libertarian Freedom’ shows how it is possible for God to achieve his purposes so described while preventing every moral evil. Such a possibility is a refutation of the Free Will Defense and related theodicies. However, it demands an account of God’s goodness that would justify God’s not preventing moral evil when he could have” (Walter J. Schultz in an email to Paul Kjoss Helseth, November 12, 2009).
105. B. B. Warfield, “God’s Providence Over All,” in Shorter Writings, 1:110.
106. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:618 – 19. I would like to thank Walter Schultz for his thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Whatever shortcomings remain are, of course, entirely my own.
107. D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, New Foundations Theological Library (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), 24 – 35.
108. Carson, Sovereignty and Responsibility, 18 – 22. One should mention also the striking passages that speak of God’s repenting in reaction to a change in human behavior (e.g., Gen. 6:6; 1 Sam 15:11, 35 KJV)
109. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:512, cited by Helseth on p. 40.
110. A point that my former student and assistant Shaun McNaughton has emphasized in personal conversation.
111. Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice,” 267.
112. Helseth’s own source, Walter Schultz, recognizes this point (Walter J. Schultz, “ ‘No- Risk’ Libertarian Freedom: A Refutation of the Free Will Defense,” Philosophia Christi 10, no. 1 (2008): 187. As Schultz puts it, “Agents do not decide to decide.”
113. Muller, “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice,” 266.
114. Quoted by Helseth on p. 36, note 97.
115. See Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination: The Meaning of Predestination in Scripture and the Church, trans. Dom Bede Rose (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books, 1998), 117 – 22. For a Dominican view of providence, see idem, Providence, trans. Dom Bede Rose (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books, 1998).
116. Fatalism is the theory that each and every event is completely determined by an impersonal necessity embedded in the impersonal events that precede it.
117. Even the distinction between primary and secondary causality falls victim to this problem How does the primary cause move the secondary cause without compromising its freedom?
118. See my chapter in this volume for my discussion of this ambiguity and the confusion it fosters in discussions of providence and evil.
119. Let me make it clear that I believe Reformed (and medieval) Christology and Trinitarian teaching are orthodox. My point is that they treated these doctrines as topics rather than thinking every doctrine through christologically.
120. Space does not permit me to delve into the myriad of exegetical issues that separate Helseth’s position from my own. For my interpretation of the classical proof texts for divine determinism, see Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 394-416; idem, Is God to Blame? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 177 – 94; as well as www.gregboyd.org/category/qa/predestination-free-will/scriptures-dealing-with-determinism/.
121. For an excellent discussion along these lines, see R. Ellis, Answering God (Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster, 2005). See also Boyd, Is God to Blame? 125 – 51.
122. The “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of children’s books was very popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Readers are at various points allowed to decide which among several possible storylines a character in the book follows.
123. One of the clearest and most entertaining expressions of this all-or-nothing way of thinking was provided by R. C. Sproul, who argued that “if there is one single molecule in the universe running around loose, perhaps that one maverick molecule will lay waste all the grand and glorious plans that God has made and promised to us” (Chosen by God [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1986], 26 -27). While Sproul offered this argument as a defense of God’s absolute (viz., all-controlling) sovereignty, I frankly have trouble imagining a more impotent and insecure deity than one whose plans are threatened by a single maverick molecule!
124. For an excellent, readable discussion of how aspects of contemporary science have illustrated this balance, see Giuseppe Del Re, The Cosmic Dance: Science Discovers the Mysterious Harmony of the Universe (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2000). For several interesting reflections on the concept of chance in science and providence, see Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? (1989; repr., Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), and Keith Ward, God, Chance and Necessity (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996).
125. The quotes within this quotation are from Warfield, “Confessional Doctrine,” 98.
126. The quotes within this quotation are from Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:511.
127. This unintelligibility is succinctly illustrated in D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 189. He writes, “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. On the other hand, God stands behind good in such a way that it not only takes place within the bounds of his sovereignty, but it is always chargeable to him, and only derivatively to secondary agents” (emphasis added). Yet, as with all theological determinists, Carson affirms that God controls evil no less than he controls good This means that the “in such a way” clause serves opposite purposes when used to “explain” how God is not responsible for the evil he controls, on the one hand, and how God is exclusively responsible for the good he controls, on the other Whatever the mysterious phrase might mean, therefore, I can only conclude that it can also, at the same time, mean its exact opposite And this, to my way of thinking, forces the conclusion that the “in such a way” clause means nothing. Remove it from the above sentences, and the meaning of the sentences is not altered. Retain it in these sentences, and their intelligibility is not increased.
128. The quote within this quotation is from Grudem, Bible Doctrine, 142.
129. I first began to suspect that strict Calvinism logically implied pantheism while reading Jonathan Edwards in graduate school Edwards, always a stickler for consistency, comes very close to inferring pantheism from his own view of divine omnicausality In his private notebooks he makes statements such as, “Speaking most strictly there is no proper substance but God Himself"; “Properly it may be said that God is and … there is none else"; and “[God] is an infinite being Therefore all others must necessarily be considered as nothing in metaphysical strictness and propriety, [God] is and there is none else “ H Townsend, ed., Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards from His Private Notebooks (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1955), 17, 33, 48. For theological reasons, Edwards of course adamantly wanted to avoid pantheism, but he seems to have realized privately that the logic of deterministic theology at least pointed in this direction.