Series On Calvinism

Welcome to our first series of theological discussions dealing with the hot issue of Calvinism, or as I would like to call it ontological determinism. We are offering on this page, the articles concerning what we exegetically and theologically understand to be an historical and philosophical analysis of the most debated issues in all of Christendom - Calvinism Vs Arminianism, or as I see it: Neo-Platonic Augustinianism (Greek) vs. Wesleyan Arminianism (Judeo-Christian).

There are six articles in this series and we hope to provide an aside series on the 5th Pillar of Calvinism dealing with the Perseverance of the Saints, or more particularly the Biblical understanding of Eternal Security, at a later time. Here we provide this quick link index to the articles in this series for the benefit of quick perusal.

Here it comes -- a series of articles on what is now considered to be the hottest issue in Protestantism today! Calvinism. For those of my readers who have heard of this word but are not sure how to sum it up in simple terms, here is a brief definition: "The view that from-the-womb-to-the-tomb God has determined the plight of each and every human being in so far as a having a relationship with Him.

I highlight the word determined because this word, more than any other, sums up Calvinism. If one is not careful in their theology, a lay person with little or no understanding of "predestination," "election" and "foreknowledge" would begin to believe that God, at least, is a puppet master or manipulator, and at worst, the originator of evil!

Before going any further I must warm my readers that this will be the first in a series of articles on the subject. I cannot deal with this issue in one sitting. If it takes the average writer two, three or sometimes four volumes to deal with the subject, it would take even the simplest of minds (like mine) at least four articles. So with this, I would like to cover the dynamics of Calvinism first, to define it and to cover a little of its origin and history.

First of all, I should begin by mentioning that I am not a Calvinist. I did attend, and graduated from, the most thoroughgoing Calvinist seminary in the United States, Westminster Theological Seminary. I not only sat at the feet of some of the most hyper-Calvinists this side of Calvin himself, but was deeply indoctrinated with their "soteriology" (the doctrine of salvation). The more I listened and studied from them the more I would come to regard God as not only the author of evil, but was evil Himself. Since I believe John 3:16 is the hallmark of Christian doctrine ("God so loved the world"...not just a chosen few), I could easily reject the conclusion of God being evil and move on to a careful and more Biblical understanding of God's nature.

You are probably wondering why I bothered to attend a school like this. Although, I was never a Calvinist, I did agree with their eschatology and desired to learn from some of the best minds about the doctrine of "the final things," i.e. the second coming of Christ. I totally agree with their eschatology and view the interpretation of the book of Revelation from a much different perspective than the most popular beliefs today. I will save this topic for another day.

Calvinism derives it's name from the great Protestant Reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564). I will point out that the term "Calvinism" doesn't mean everything Calvin believed and taught. Calvin merely articulated the theology. He was trained as a lawyer and as such used the skill of systematizing," meaning he could take an issue and put it in it's logical order. The theological understanding of God determining the plight of humankind is called "Augustinianism," which means a theology derived from the 5th century Bishop of Carthage, Augustine. Augustine's understanding of anthropology was nothing new. He merely adapted his theology from Greek philosophy, in particular, Plato's worldview of determinism.

In short, Plato taught that the events and actions of nature and man are (present tense) determined by "the elements." The word Plato used was stoicheia which meant the rudimentary elements that, binding together, form "a whole manipulator." Plato saw this manipulator as present and working, not a thing, or person who did something in the past.

Augustine, highly educated in Plato's teachings, became Neo-Platonist (in other words, he adapted his view of man and man's plight from those learned leading teachers of his day who held to Plato's teachings with modifications). Augustine brought these teachings into his theology after his conversion. He, like the rebellious Jews in the time of the Kings, carried the "best" of his heathen indoctrination into his Christian teachings and merely synchronized his theology. In other words, he continued to believe Plato's philosophy of determinism and merely substituted, stoicheia with the word "God." And, instead of putting God's actions of determination in the present, he placed determination in the past! That God acted in the past and, therefore, has pre-determined man and nature.

Eleven hundred years later, John Calvin, having studied Augustine and acting with Martin Luther in reaction to the Roman Catholic Church's teaching of works toward salvation, systematized Augustine's theology and enumerated God's working in human history in his magnum opus: The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Since the time of John Calvin, others have further elaborated and refined his thoughts. Among these was one Cornelius Van Til, once a professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and founder of Westminster, my alma mater. The many who were of his students continued the tradition and three were my teachers.

The aspects of Calvinism I criticize in this series are those central to historic Reformed theology and are where Calvinism diverges most sharply from what I consider to be most Biblical. The refined Calvinism today is still very much Greek (or rather Platonic) and very much synchronistic, placing the teachings of the Bible about man along side of Plato.

I must say from the outset that I am not an Arminian (that is, a follower of the theology of Jacob Arminius who was considered a heretic by those who were followers of Calvinism in the 17th century). I am historically a Wesleyan-Arminian which I will explain in a later article. As an Arminian-Wesleyan, I would like to address certain Calvinistic claims about salvation and how God bestows it upon His children.

This issue of salvation is central to Christian theology. Some of the most hotly contested disputes among Christians arise over it.

Although the following did not derive from Calvin himself, the familiar acrostic stems from 3rd generation Calvinists who rejected Arminius and his followers. This is merely a summary of the Calvinistic view of salvation: It's called the "TULIP."

Recognize that acrostic? It stands for:

In Christendom today, Presbyterians, Lutherans and those of Reformed tradition churches (such as Congregationalists) adhere to 4 or all 5 of these points. Lutherans and Presbyterians are not dogmatic in there views so as to say that man has no free-will as are those of the Reformed tradition. Among Baptists of various denominations (Southern Baptist being the largest) many adhere to the last point. Yet Calvinism (4 or all 5 points) is growing among Southern Baptists and many of their number truly believe it will be the next divider of this largest denomination in America. I am a Southern Baptist, but my Wesleyan-Arminianism as modified by years of biblical research, forces me to come to the conclusion that it is impossible, both logically, philosophically and, by extension, theologically, to believe in any 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the previously noted points of Calvinism without adhering to all 5. That it to say, modified Calvinism is a contradiction.

Simply put, God either predestines everything and everyone or He allows man a freedom of choice (note the use of the word "choice" instead of "will"). This does not deny that God knows how we will choose, but merely states that God will not interfere with our choices by manipulating, determining or in anyway programming our decisions for us.

Although these five points represent the core of what is distinctive about Calvinism, they are hardly exhaustive. Underlying them is a particular understanding of divine sovereignty that is also characteristic of Calvinism of which I have no problem. Yet, the issues I will discuss in later articles stem from these five points.

Many Southern Baptist leaders claim that "Calvinism is nothing more and nothing less than the simple assertion that salvation is all of grace, from the beginning to the end." These are the words of my friend Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY and the seminary graduating more Calvinist minds than any other among Southern Baptists. Whereas I have no problem with Mohler's statement, I will quickly point out this is highly misleading because Calvinism is a whole lot more than that! I agree that salvation is by grace alone and from start to finish, but that does not make one a Calvinist. In fact, Arminians and Wesleyans believe the same thing. The really interesting questions are how grace is given and how it effects our salvation.

These issues must be dealt with by an informed interpretation of Scripture and careful philosophical analysis. It must be approached by looking at the full context of the Bible, as well as fully understanding the nature of God. Unfortunately, Calvinists are quick to say that their view is based on Scripture while Wesleyans and Arminians base theirs from reason and philosophy. This serious misunderstanding unfairly slants the issue in favor of Calvinism before the discussion is started.

As I pointed out in the beginning of this article, Calvinism derives historically from Augustinianism, which is a Greek philosophical presupposition that all things are determined. The roots of Calvinism, in and of itself, is philosophical. Passages of Scripture which speak of "predestination," "election," and God's "calling" or "choosing before the foundation of the world" are approached with Platonic glasses on. Any theological issue that is approached with preconceptions is merely a preconception of itself in the least, and an assumption at best. In other words, it doesn't prove a truth.

The articles to come, I will address each of the five points of Calvinism in simple detail, but more importantly, will present the implications if Calvinism is the Biblical truth.

Let me conclude this mere introduction by telling of a most disturbing event. When my wife an I first visited Westminster Theological Seminary, before my becoming a student there, we stayed with a young couple who had recently became the parents of a baby girl. The father was a student at the seminary, the wife a social worker. We entered into a discussion of God's sovereign grace and its implications. He, of course, argued from a Calvinist point of view. The young man was deeply entrenched in Reformed theology and I would consider him more Calvinist than Calvin was. When I asked him what would he think if he were to find out that his little daughter was predestined by God to hell. His response, though logical for a Calvinist, still caught me by surprise. He said (in words I will never forget), "God is sovereign and if He determined that my daughter should be consigned to perdition, then praise be to Him, for He alone chooses the ones He loves!"

Next time, I address the issue of whether God is the author of sin and, by extension, is the devil himself.

The debate between Calvinism and Arminianism can best be summed up with the phrase: Monergism vs. Synergism. In other words, in "monergism" God and God alone does all the work, makes all the initiatives and provides everything necessary to effect salvation to humans. In "synergism," God provides all that is necessary for man to obtain salvation, but man must make the choice of whether he believes and is willing to accept the responsibilities God requires of the Christian life, or reject it.

Calvinists, since the early 17th century have been quick to accuse Arminians of adhering to a belief system similar to the Gnostics of Paul's day. That salvation is effected on man's working his way toward salvation through a knowledge of God and His will and that by following His will (through man's free-will) will guarantee eternal life.

To clear things up a bit, I take you back to the time of Jacob Arminius, born Jacob Harmenszoon, a Dutch theologian who, by the way, had no ancestral lineage in the country of Armenia! Arminius is simply the Latinized form of Harmenszoon. He lived from 1560 until 1609 and was the author of numerous works filling three large volumes, defending the evangelical form of synergism. To Arminius, divine-human cooperation in salvation was taught throughout Scripture.

Arminius was not the first synergist in Christian history; all of the Greek Church Fathers of the first two Christian centuries and many of the medieval Catholic theologians were synergists of some kind. Furthermore, as Arminius and his earliest followers, known as "Remonstrants," loved to point out, many Protestants before him were synergists in some sense of the word.

Many Calvinists today, although not all, have come to regard Arminianism, and Arminian-Wesleyanism as authentically Protestant and not of the Reformed traditions. A number of Calvinists, especially the so-called hyper-Calvinists, think of any form of Arminianism as a belief system of the mind, like "humanism" in the least and heresy at best.

I would like to point out, though, that real Arminianism is merely takes a different approach to the doctrine of salvation known as soteriology. Both Calvinists and Arminians believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. Therefore, both are opposed to salvation by grace through faith and good works. The difference though is that Calvinists believe that both grace and faith are both given to those who are elected to have faith, whereas Arminians believe grace is God's part in salvation and faith is man's part.

Both deny that any part of salvation can be based on human merit. Both affirm the sole supreme authority of the Scripture and the priesthood of all believers. The ways part when it comes to predestination. Arminius and his followers, especially John Wesley many years later, opposed belief in unconditional reprobation - God's selection of some persons to spend eternity in hell. Because they opposed that, they also opposed unconditional election. To Arminius, it was logical that if some were elected to heaven, then the rest must to consigned to hell. God could not just elect some to salvation and just forget the others or else they would be consigned to live forever on earth since there would be no election to hell. The two are inextricably linked.

Important to this understanding is Arminius' argument that if there was the unconditional selection of some to salvation and unconditional selection of the rest to reprobation would impugn the character of God. Many of the Remonstrants and since the 17th century, those who became followers of John Wesley, have concluded that if God selected before the foundation of the earth who would be saved and who would be damned, then He is the author of evil.

In my last article, I noted that Calvin argued from and systematized the works of Augustine. Augustine was a Neo-Platonist student of philosophy at the time of his conversion and as previously noted, Neo-Platonists, followers of many of the teachings of Plato were determinists. Plato, one of the greatest minds in all of human history, expounded upon the rich ideas of ancient pagan Greece. In Homer's Odyssey, we see the gods in the heavens manipulating the moves of men and women as they related to the gods and their enemies. Each of man's moves were planned by the so-called divine minds and manipulated like pawns on a chessboard.

Plato took away the divine and mystically substituted the "elements," much like the Zoroastrians and astrologers of old. Augustine put the divine back into determinism by substituting the elements with Jehovah God. Augustinianism is Greek in origin and, by extension, Calvinism is Platonic (Greek) as opposed to Judeo-Christian.

As promised in the last article, I stated that I would address the issue of whether God is the author of evil and, if so, would that make him a (or The) devil? The problem of evil is an age-old quandary that has challenged Christian thinkers and other theists for centuries. Indeed, the problem of evil has been a favorite weapon in the atheists' arsenal as long as atheists have been doing battle with believers.

Critics of Christianity have often claimed that evil is simply incompatible with the existence of God. A very dear friend of mine, John Loftus, with whom I attended seminary and who became a Christian apologist and theologian uses this as his argument for becoming an Atheist!

Since the late 90's, John has argued that if God is the origin of evil then He is not God at all. In an e-mail sent to me last year, John told me that he believed that most of Christendom is heading toward Calvinism and the Calvinistic resurgence will prevail in most seminaries and theological circles in the very near future. Then, he blamed Calvinism for one of the reasons he "deconverted." Actually, he blames the prevailing understanding of the nature of God as his rationale for turning to Atheism.

Many Baptists (last point Calvinists) would argue that John was never saved in the first place, as would all other Calvinists. But John preached the gospel for a number of years, taught Christian doctrine in Bible Colleges and Christian Theology in a university setting. He has lead many people to Jesus Christ through his life, teaching and preaching. He was considered a Christian apologist - a defender of the Christian faith.

Calvinists point out that even the devil has his followers in the pulpits, but Jesus points out that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," i.e. that the devil preaching against himself is futile.

So John points to the Calvinist's unquestionable following of Platonic philosophy as proof that God does not exist. If there was a God who had the attributes Christians say he has - omnipotence and perfect goodness - then there would be no evil. For if He were omnipotent, then it seems He has the power to do anything possible including eliminate all evil. If He is perfectly good, then He is opposed to evil and would want to remove it. But, as John would argue, because there is obviously evil all around, there is no such God.

This intellectual challenge requires a rational response that will show God's existence is indeed compatible with the existence of evil. The attempt to do this is call theodicy, a term that derives from words meaning "God" and "justice." Theodicy is the attempt to show the justice or goodness of God in the face of evil.

Evil, though, is far more than a puzzle to be solved by logic or reasoning. It is made nearly impossible to solve with an adherence to Calvin's soteriology. You see, one flaw in John's argument may just be that he doesn't see the implications of Calvinism not being the all-alone sufficient explanation for the nature of God. Indeed, if the Calvinists are right, then God is at best a master manipulator, a puppet master and at least the author of evil.

So, what theological resources do we have to make some sense of evil and tragedy when we encounter them? I should point out that because of their distinctive theological convictions, Calvinists sometime dismiss the whole project of theodicy as a pointless one. Some argue that God no doubt has reasons for ordaining evil, but there is no way we could know those reasons. Others emphasize that we are God's property, and since He can do whatever He wants to do with His property, we have no grounds for complaint, regardless of how we suffer. Some, the so-called "hyper-Calvinists" go so far as to argue that since God is the source and standard for what is right, anything He does is right by definition, even if it does not seem right or virtuous to us.. Thus, the problem of evil simply cannot arise.

It would take me too far afield to discuss these matters in detail, but I do want to address one specific issue: whether our grasp of goodness is reliable enough for us even to make judgments about what is evil and what is not. Some of the objections to theodicy assume that our understanding of goodness and evil may be so radically different from God's that we can't even begin to understand how His purposes are good.

I contend, by contrast, that our moral judgments are more trustworthy than this view holds. This is not to say that our moral judgments are perfect or that we can call God to account by some standard that is higher than God Himself. But I believe that our moral judgments, at best, are a reflection of God's own nature and as such are reliable. Of course, since we are sinners, having fallen from God's intended path in the beginning, our moral judgments are distorted by sin, so we need the benefit of revelation to correct and refine our perceptions. But we are still made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). and that is a deeper truth about us than our sin is.

Calvinists, when addressing the concept of "the image of God" in man, point that the said image, at the fall, was shattered or destroyed/ That man is no longer in His image, unless it is remade in Christ. By extension, if the image is shattered then it must follow that many is totally depraved. Arguing that depravity is the direct corollary of having lost God's image, Calvinists must logically claim that there can be no moral judgment on man's part. Yet, Calvinists will argue that there is a thing called "common grace," meaning a reflection of a sense of right and wrong given to all men (regardless of their election) and a confidence in the best of moral judgments and institutions. One manifestation of this so-called "common grace," they state, is our legal system.

But this begs the question of whether the image of God was shattered or destroyed at the fall of Adam in Genesis 3. If the image of God is gone and man is therefore totally depraved then, why would God want to ever interact with man? If He was so distraught with Adam and Eve, why didn't He just destroy them and start all over? These questions become moot when placed alongside of the wider picture of whether God is the source or evil. If He is, then He "predestined" Adam and Eve to sin, a view often called supralapsarianism, meaning that God unconditionally predestined men and, by extension, events such as the fall, before the fall.

I will continue to discuss this issue next time when I address the first of the five points of Calvinism "Total Depravity."

The first of the so-called five points of Calvinism is Total Depravity. As noted in the first article, total depravity describes the desperate condition of fallen sinners apart from the grace of God. Sin has affected every facet of human personality to such an extent that we are incapable of doing good or loving God as we should. Our thinking is distorted, our emotions are deceptive and out of proportion, and our desires are unruly and misdirected. In this condition, we are bent on rebellion and evil and are completely unwilling to submit to God and His perfect will. Consequently, we deserve only God's wrath and eternal punishment. Sinners in this condition are so utterly helpless that they are accurately described as "dead in their transgression and sins (Ephesians 2:1). So pervasive and deadly is the effect of sin that they can no more respond to God or do His will than a dead man could respond if commanded to get up and walk.

On the matter of total depravity, Calvinists are in essential agreement with believers in many other Christian traditions. The differences arise when one asks how God deals with sinners in this desperate condition. The Arminian and Wesleyan answer is that the death of Christ provided grace to all persons through the Holy Spirit to counteract the influence of sin and to enable a positive response to God (John 15:26-27; 16:7-11). The initiative here is entirely God's; the sinner's part is only to respond in faith and grateful obedience (Luke 15; Romans 5:6-8; Ephesians 2:4 & 5). However, it is possible for sinners to resist God's initiative and to persist in sin and rebellion. In other words, God's grace enables and encourages a positive and saving response for everyone, but it does not determine a saving response for anyone (Acts 7:51). Moreover, an initial positive response of faith and obedience does not guarantee one's final salvation. It is possible to begin a genuine relationship with God but then later turn from Him and persist in evil so that one is finally lost (Rom 812-13; 11:19-22; Gal. 5:21; 6:7-10 and Hebrews 6:1-8).

Arminians and Wesleyans both believe in Total Depravity! But the difference between their understanding of this is very much different from that of the Calvinists. Because of the fall, every aspect of human nature is tainted by sin. Jacob Arminius' view of the human fallenness could hardly be stronger if he had been a full-blown Calvinist. He declared that because of Adam's fall all humanity has come under the dominion of sin and that

In this state, the Free Will of man towards the True Good is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent and weakened (attenuatum); but it is also imprisoned (captivatum), destroyed and lost: And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace.

Arminius continued in his description of the result of the Fall by extending it beyond the will to the mind of the human person (dark, destitute of the saving knowledge of God, and ... incapable of those things which belong to the Spirit of God), to the heart ("it hates and has an aversion to that which is truly good and pleasing to God; but it loves to pursue what is evil"), and to any power to perform the good ("utter weakness to perform that which is truly good"). Finally he declared that "nothing can be spoken more truly concerning man in this state, than that he is altogether dead in sin."

So what is the difference between Calvin's view of total depravity and the Arminian-Wesleyan view? The first thing to note while answering this question is that Arminius' understanding of total depravity denies that God is or was in any way the cause of the first sin (Adam's sin), and he believed that so-called "high Calvinism" cannot avoid imputing such to God because of God's claimed foreordination and withdrawing of necessary grace. Rather, the efficient cause of humanity's fall is humanity itself as stimulated by the devil. Arminius and the Remonstrants taught that God merely permitted the fall and is in no way guilty because "He neither denied nor withdrew any thing that was necessary for avoiding this sin and fulfilling the law; but He had endowed him (Adam) sufficiently with all things requisite for that purpose, and preserved him after he was thus endured." Arminius agreed with Calvinism that one result of Adam's fall is the fallenness of his posterity.

The question arises between the two opposing views as to how the human condition after the fall affects man's ability to choose. In the Augustinian-Calvinist theology, man is incapable of a choice in any way or manner regarding a relationship with God. To the Calvinist, the "image of God" referred to in the previous article was destroyed in man and that God's image is no longer a part of the human race, until God imputs it "back" through His effectual call (election).

The image of God (imago dei) is the one thing that separates man from animals! It is not that mankind have souls and animals don't, but that man was made in the image of God. Calvinists say the image of God left Adam at the fall and what is passed on to his descendants is a corrupt soul - totally depraved and incapable of making responsible choices. This, logically, leads to the concept of determinism. Without the image of God, man is locked in and cannot make choices unless they be initiated by God. What follows is a logical progression of determinism which leads to a misunderstanding of election and predestination. Logically, if man and his actions are determined (or predetermined) then this weakens, if not altogether rules out, personal responsibility. And if man is not responsible, then how can he be punished, much less rewarded, with anything?

In my next article, I will address the second point of Calvinism Unconditional Election and, with that, the concept of predestination. Keep in mind, the issue of predestination always revolves around the question of "What" or "Who" was predestined? To the Calvinist, all people are predestined. It is a matter of a "Who?" than a "What?" Also, keep in mind that if all of mankind is totally depraved in the understanding of the Calvinists, i.e. the image of God is destroyed and man cannot make a choice on his own, then it follows that God makes the decisions for man. We ask the question, what factors does God use to determine which person's He wants to enter into Heaven and which one's He doesn't? Is it an arbitrary choice, or is it a game? Does God flip a coin or does He play enne-meenie-miney-moe?

These articles are not intended to poke fun at or in any way make a slam toward Calvinists. We merely want to point out the logical progression and repercussions of a theology which is grounded in 4th century Greek Neo-Platonism.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined them to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would become the firstborn among many brothers; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. Romans 8:29-30

The above passage from Scripture along with Ephesians 1:4 & 5 have been used as the proof texts of Calvinists far and wide to justify their belief in the Predestination of all mankind. In the Ephesians text, the Apostle Paul said: ...He chose is in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,...

Calvinists often speak of these verses as "the golden chain," an unbreakable sequence of steps in God's sovereign plan leading from unconditional, individual election to final glorification. The elect can find great comfort in the assurance that all those who begin the process (by God's election) will make it through to glorification. All those who know for certain that they have been justified possess an ironclad guarantee of their final salvation and glorification.

The first hesitation I have in accepting this interpretation stems from the warning Paul issued to the Romans only sixteen verses earlier: If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (Rom. 8:13). Paul makes it clear that glorification depends on a Christian's continued connection to Jesus: If we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we hare in His sufferings (Rom 8:17). Later we find Paul again warning his readers that those who veer away from God's face face fearful prospects. If God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you will be cut off (Rom 11:21-22). My question is this: Why would such a warning ever be uttered if the "golden chain" of Romans 8:29 & 30 functions as an absolute guarantee for individuals?

As noted in the previous articles, Calvinism relies on and logically stands on its five points. Logically, philosophically and theologically the five points are interlinked and that it is impossible to be a 1, 2, 3 or 4 point Calvinist without accepting all five as true! This has tremendous ramifications for those who believe in eternal security, or "once saved-always saved." The implication being if man has the freedom to choose God and His accept His Son as Lord and Savior, then he looses his free will or freedom of choice upon receiving salvation and being saved. Our question would then be does man have the freedom of choice up until the time he is saved and then looses it? We will save this question for another time as we are, with this article, searching for the meaning of predestination, or to put it in the form of a theological question: What, or Whom is Predestined?"

The doctrine of predestination is Biblical! Paul makes it one of the main subjects at the heart of his teaching about the love and grace of God. Following on the heals of my last article, to the Calvinist, if man is totally depraved, unable to save himself (which he can't), but still unable to make the move toward the one who saves him (which Calvinists teach), then he is forever lost in his sin and by extension consigned to hell. Calvinists teach that God does all the moving and all the compelling, moving man toward Him and His will by issuing a "call." God does all the work. Man has no bearing in the choice and in no way assists in the choice by any freedom to follow God's will.

For the purpose of this article I propose that we take a look at those passages which talk of predestination as God's act in past history of choosing those whom He would love and who would be incorporated into His kingdom.

As we saw in the last article, to the Calvinist, man's total depravity renders him incapable of making a move toward God, much less willing any kind of relationship with Him. If God, then chooses to issue the "call" to a person, then he is said to have been predestined. We have also seen that the Calvinist system is grounded in the theology of Augustine as synchronized with the teachings of Plato. The "determinist" model of man's plights can be summed up in the following historical narrative:

In The Odyssey, Homer depicted the gods and the movers of events and man around, as it were, a chessboard. Plato, nearly 500 years later, removed the gods and put the stoicheia as the prime movers in history and man's plight. Sir Isaac Newton would call these stoicheia by such terms as nature and natural events and factors, such as gravity and the movement of the stars. But Newton was no determinist in the same way Calvin was and his followers would soon propagate what is called the Newtonian world machine as the mover of man's actions. From the followers of Plato came Augustine who 700 years after the philosopher's death would say that it is not the stoicheia which governs and serve as the prime motivator of man, but God.

Another huge shift in the teachings of Augustine from Plato was the former's attention to the Ephesian 1:4 & 5 text in which he places God's action in the past, whereas Plato (and Homer before him) places the actions of the prime movers in the present. Augustine, and later Martin Luther (a former Augustinian monk) and John Calvin, would teach that God acted in the past and that all of man's actions in reference to God have been predetermined.

If all men everywhere are predestined, where does that leave personal responsibility? For this and other questions I would draw your attention to several references wherein Paul addresses both personal responsibility and life's choices. In Galatians, for instance, he identified the two lifestyles and their consequences: Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life (Galatians 6:7-8). This warning itself reemphasizes what Paul had declared to the Galatian believers earlier: I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21).

Many Calvinists argue that these warnings expose no eternal danger to real Christians. We are told either that Paul was not addressing genuine Christians at all or that he was envisioning purely temporal dangers, such as illness or premature (physical) death. But neither of these explanations can account for the specific content of these passages. At other times we are asked to imagine that Paul was engaging in rhetorical overstatement to spur his readers on to good behavior. This suggestion is both psychologically and morally troublesome, reminding us of parents who use empty threats to manipulate their unruly children. If Paul believes that the elect are absolutely guaranteed ultimate salvation and that this guarantee forms the very bedrock of Christian confidence in the face of suffering and trial, then it is puzzling to find him undercutting this very guarantee with warnings to the contrary. But if these stern warnings teach that the journey from election to glory is not inevitable, then we doubt that Paul was attempting to establish just the opposite in Romans 8:29-30.

If there is good reason to question of the Romans passage, what other viable understandings might this text suggest? One answer relates to the verb tenses found in the fivefold sequence of God's actions: He foreknew, He predestined, He Called, He justified, He glorified. Many have pointed out that Paul expresses the last step in the past tense (glorified) even though for Paul and all Christians to date, glorification lies in the future. Less often realized is that the third and fourth steps (called and justified) are likewise presented as past events, though God has been and continues to be about the business of calling and justifying people down through the ages. This may show us that Paul is viewing the end of human history, after God has brought to completion the whole redemptive plan. Seen from the end of history, Paul observes that all Christians who have been glorified have of course been foreknown, predestine, called and justified. Paul is not asking his readers to reflect on the classic problems of determinism and free will, or thinking in terms of a decree which excludes as well as one which includes. His thought is simply that from the perspective of the end of time, it will be evident that history has been the stage for the unfolding of God's purpose, the purpose of the Creator fulfilling His original intention in creating.

A second (non-Calvinist)understanding of Romans 8:29-30 takes is cue from Paul's teaching in Romans 5 and 6 that sinners who once lived in Adam's lineage may 9through faith) be incorporated "into Christ" through baptism (Rom 5:12-17 & 6:3-4). Those residing "in Christ" live in a new reality and benefit from the mighty events of death and resurrection that Jesus Himself experienced. The apostle can therefore address believers themselves (all of whom are "in Christ") as those who have buried with Jesus, or as those who have died with Him, or as those who walk in newness of life, or as those who will experience resurrection "with Him." Since Jesus is the primary character in the events of God's redemptive plan, we experience these events only indirectly, by being "in" the lead player. It is difficult to overstate just how significant for the whole of Paul's theology is this corporate vision of the church finding its identity, its salvation, its wealth and its security in Christ.

Here we come to the Ephesian passage alluded to above. Here believers are described as having been chosen and predestined "in Him." This encourages us all the more to read Romans 8:29-30 as referring not to a specific, set number of persons who individually progress through the five "steps" without mathematical gain or loss, but to the whole body of Christ, without particular focus on the individuality of its members. The people of God as a whole, having been incorporated into Christ, are most certainly destined to arrive at the goal God has established from the beginning. Each of us is assured of participating in that most certain end, provided we remain among this people and remain in His kindness (Romans 11:22).

A cursory reading of the first chapter and a half of Ephesians presents the reader with a conspicuous phrase "in Christ" or (a similar expression), which occurs twelve times in the singular sentence forming Ephesians 1:3-14. This unusual linguistic feature serves to fix our attention on Jesus as the source of all spiritual blessing, especially on redemption in all of its dimensions.

I should point out that the language in the Ephesian text is not simply that spiritual blessings come to us through Christ, as if He were merely their conduit, but that these rich treasures are found in Jesus. Since we have been baptized into Christ(Rom. 6:3) and have been united with Him (Rom. 6:5-8), we who have been redeemed have a new location, a new cosmic address. Now that we have been incorporated into Christ, we have entered into the drama of his own story. His death has become our death, His resurrection has become our resurrection (Ephesians 2:5) and His position of privilege at the Father's right hand brings us an immeasurable wealth of grace (Eph. 2:6-7). Only by being in Him can we share in the blessings He provides.

The reality of our incorporation into Christ permeates Paul's thinking and helps us grasp the idea of divine choice and predestination as taught in this passage. It is in Him that we have been chosen and predestined (Eph 1:4-5), just as it is in Him that we have been seated in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6-7). This means that Jesus Christ Himself is the chosen one, the predestined one. Whenever one is incorporated into Him by grace through faith, one comes to share in Jesus' special status as chosen of God. This view of election most fully accounts for the corporate nature of salvation, the decisive role of faith and the overarching reliability of God's bringing His people to the destined end.

The correct way to understand election and predestination is not to ask who God predestined, but what? God, predetermined a plan wherein "whosoever wills" can find eternal life. The plan was the sacrificial death and the glorified resurrection of His Son in whom we have been incorporated.

How do individuals enter (and remain in) the redeemed community of God's people? Ephesians 2:8, says that it is by grace through faith. All agree that God's salvation requires a believing response to God's gift of grace. His part, or rather His plan which was predestined, was grace. Our response is the receiving of that grace through faith. Not all, however, agree on the nature of this faith, especially on how faith itself arises. Calvinists are quick to point to other verse where an exact description of faith's origin appears to be provided: "through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."

If faith is not our doing but God's gift, then the well-known features of Calvinism fall into place. Those who "have faith" have been given faith by God, and those who don't have faith have not been given faith by God. By this view, faith becomes a function of divine causation operating according to the individual electing will of God.

Grammatically, though, the terms faith, this and it are not neatly connected in the original Greek. The two pronouns may seem to refer back to the nearest antecedent in English (which they would), but in Greek the pronouns would refer back to the nearest antecedent which matches in gender and number. Greek was and still is an inflected language, and depends upon "tags" that are attached to words for guiding the reader. If Paul desired his readers to connect faith directly to the pronouns this and it then who would have used the feminine gender for the pronouns as "faith" is feminine. Instead, Paul uses the neuter gender in the pronouns to point us back several words earlier - to the idea of salvation express by the verb. Accordingly, we should read the text with a different line of connection as follows: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this {salvation is} not from yourselves, it {this salvation} is the gift of God."

Many Calvinists fear that any retreat from the conviction that God causes faith will make salvation a human accomplishment. If faith is something we do, then salvation rests on our deeds and no longer on God's grace. If faith is viewed as our part in the process of salvation, then salvation must be viewed as a cooperative affair, thus forming that synergism referred to in my first article.

Calvinist are quick to deny that man has any role to play in the experience of salvation. They often decry Wesleyan-Arminian interpretations of Romans 8:29-30 as failing to provide a sufficiently strong sense of comfort and security to the believer. But it is ironic to hear Calvinists reject these interpretations on these emotional grounds, since it is Calvinists who often charge others with interpreting Scripture so as to gratify human emotions and sensitivities. In the case of Romans 8:29-30, I can claim that I am challenged by the human demand for absolute certainty and comfortable security, while the Calvinist interpretation caves in to that demand.

Man's plight, then, has not been predestined before the foundation of the world but that his plight is wrapped up in the predestined plight of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. He was the one predestined to suffer, He was the one predestined to conquer death and raise in glory and if we choose to accept the predestined gift, then we, too, will be numbered with the elect.

The next article will answer the questions as to whether Christ died only for a few or for the world, and if His grace can be thwarted (resisted).

Many critics of Arminianism (or Wesleyan-Arminianism) accuse it of departing from the strong substitutionary atonement doctrine of Martin Luther and John Calvin as well as those who followed them. Calvinists especially have several issues with Arminianism's doctrine of the atonement. First, they accuse non-Calvinists of universalism, that Christ's death results in the salvation of everybody regardless a commitment to God. Others actually think Arminianism results in the belief that Christ's death on the cross actually saved no one.

The first of these criticisms arise from high Calvinism's doctrine of limited atonement. This is the idea which was spelled out by the Synod of Dort (1618-19) which said that Christ's death, though sufficient for salvation of all of humanity, was actually intended by God only for the elect. Arminians call this "Limited Atonement" because this limits the scope of Christ's substitutionary sacrifice only to a chosen few. Calvinist's prefer the term "definite" or "particular" atonement because they say Christ died only for those God intended to save - definite group of particular people.

As I have stated in the previous articles, the Calvinist understanding of divine sovereignty necessarily generates a set of doctrinal conclusions denying human free will (in the sense of the power of contrary choice), asserting God's grace as perfectly triumphant and restricting God saving intentions to a subset of humanity. The problem of accepting this neo-Platonic worldview creates turmoil and disorder among series Bible believing people.

One stream of turbulence results from restricting God's saving intention to a subset of humanity which they call "the elect." Just how wide are God's saving intentions? If God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son (John 3:16), then it would seem that the loving heart of the Father embraced the whole world as He set in motion the saving mission of the Son. We read that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for outs but also for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2). The same writer elaborates on this ministry of expiation by connecting it to the love of God: God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world . . . as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (I John 4:8-10). It appears that God's universal love energizes God's worldwide mission of redemption.

Paul also wheels the argument of Romans 1-11 to a climactic conclusion: For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on them all (Romans 11:32). Here the scope of God's intention to have mercy matches the scope of human sinfulness, as indicated by the repeated word all. In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul establishes that all human beings without exception have been consigned to disobedience, then the symmetry of Paul's expression in Romans 11:32 strong implies that God intends to have mercy in a similar scope: on all human beings without exception. Even if we allow that Paul may here be referring to Jews and Gentiles as people groups, we must not imagine that God's desire to show mercy fails to apply to every individual within each group.

After all, Paul establishes that all humans are under sin by arguing that both Gentiles (Romans 1:18-32) and Jews (Romans 2:1-3:20) as people groups are under sin. If we accept Paul's strategy of indicting every individual through indictment of the group, then consistency requires that we allow the same extension to hold with regard to God's mercy, as Romans 11:32 says.

Of course Calvinists have offered their own accountings of these and other passages. Some argue, for example, that the "world" loved by God in John 3:16 must refer only to "the elect in the world." Similarly, they read the unqualified all in restricted senses (e.g. "all types of people" or "all the elect"). Accordingly, the scriptural claim that Jesus died not only for our sins but also the sins of the whole world means that Jesus died not only for the sins of (some) Jews but also for the sins of (some) Gentiles. These restrictive interpretations of all require such textual gymnastics that they condemn themselves as invalid!

It is noteworthy that recently a number of Calvinists have expressed reservations about the doctrine of limited atonement. In some cases there has been outright disagreement with its traditional notion. Other Calvinists dispute the substance of the notion and argue that it is incompatible with clear scriptural teaching that Christ died for all persons. Those Calvinists who acknowledge this but still want to retain the essence of the traditional Reformed position argue that Christ died for the elect in a different sense than He died for the non-elect..

As noted in my first article, logically and theologically it is impossible to not adhere to the full Reformed traditional understanding of Limited Atonement and be a consistent Calvinist. In other words, Calvinism demands adherence to all five points in order to be consistent and viable. By its very nature "determinism" locks the universe into its manipulative power and all the other implications behind it fall in line. If God predetermines the plight of humanity, then it follows: 1) He does so because it is totally depraved; 2) must have a way to provide salvation which is has no preconditions; 3) since some are singles out of salvation (the elect) then only they can receive an atonement and Christ's death is only for them; 4) total depravity means no free will therefore God's grace on the elect is irresistible (it can't be rejected); and 5) once your are singled out as part of the elect you can't ever lose it. It's a consistent argument.

From the atonement to the irresistible nature of God's grace is not a hard step to take. When God imputes his selection of an individual to salvation, the one who receives it cannot reject it. Calvinists say he wouldn't want to reject it. This begs the question as to who would want to reject eternal life? The Calvinist's assumption that there is nothing one can do to change God's mind about one's salvation is indeed biblical. But, the argument comes as to whether man can chose what God has predestined since the foundation of the earth. As we saw in the last article, it is not who but what is predestined. We have seen that what was predestined was a plan. The plan is that through the sacrificial death of Christ there would be eternal life offered. The Calvinists would say eternal life is not offered it is irresistibly given. It cannot be rejected and has to be accepted if God affords it to you.

Calvinists do not deny that the Bible contains many reports of people successfully rejecting divine commands and invitations. Nor do Calvinists object when Arminians flood the record with a host of passages, from Genesis to Revelation, mirroring the lament of Hosea 11:1-2 When Israel was a child, I love him, and our of Egypt, I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. in others words, Calvinists believe in irresistible grace without ignoring the biblical data of successful human rebellion against God's invitation.

Their explanation runs as follows: When one resists God's call, it is simply because God has chosen not to move the human will to respond appropriately. Furthermore, no human being can respond appropriately to any divine invitation or command unless God's unilateral, transforming action accompanies it. In other words, when one successfully rejects God's commands, one has not successfully resisted God's power, since God's power was never exerted in this case. Similarly, if a toddler successfully pinned her father to the carpet in a wrestling hold, we would all instinctively judge that the father was withholding his real strength and was only simulating a genuine struggle.

We face yet again the troubling prospect of a God whose action (or inaction) contradicts His words. While His words may seem like a warm invitation or command to repent and seem to indicate that God desires an appropriate human response, God's choice to withhold His transforming power reveals His deeper desire not to create in humans the appropriate response. It would be like God tenderly entreating us to eat healing fruit but withholding the one essential ingredient that would make it possible for us to do just that!

Pressing this understanding through the whole of Scripture seems to us a prohibitively costly project, since at every turn, the words of Scripture must then be read in ways most readers would never imagine. Take, for example, the word of God through Jeremiah to Judah:

Hear and pay attention, do not be arrogant, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before He brings the darkness. . . .But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride,; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the Lord's flock will be taken captive. (Jeremiah 13:15-17)

Knowing that Judah did not turn and listen, the Calvinist concludes that God had already chosen to withhold His transforming grace from them, though he could easily have granted it. So while the text appears to identify Judah's pride as the root cause of punishment, the Calvinist instead concludes that Judah's ability to repent depends of God's eternally fixed plan. Again, although the text seems to identify salvation as God's deepest desire, the Calvinist must conclude that at a deeper level God never intended to bestow transforming grace on Jeremiah's hearers. In other words, the true intentions of God cannot be discerned from His words.

Somewhere along the way, the burden of reading myriad passages throughout the Bible in such a counterintuitive fashion should anxiously bring us to this sort of question since the Calvinist view of divine sovereignty routinely requires such an awkward "decoding" of biblical texts, shouldn't we reexamine the Calvinist view of divine sovereignty itself?

Some Calvinists appear to ground their view of God's sovereignty on their understanding of God's perfection, and their views of perfection in turn eliminate the possibility of human freedom. For if human beings actually possessed a will undetermined by God, then human history would become a very messy, unruly stream of events hardly corresponding to God's plan and only partly responsive to his power. Under such conditions, Calvinists reason, it would seem impossible to describe God as perfect, since God's will and God's power over the world would fail to qualify as perfectly enacted or effective.

Such theological reasoning reminds us of what Thomas Morris calls "perfect-being theology," an approach seeking to build theology put of the initial description of God as perfect. From that secure starting point, it is believed that many other features of God's character and activity can be logically deduced with certainty. I suspect that Calvinists move across the steppingstones from "God is perfect" to "God must be in perfect control" to "perfect control requires determining every detail of reality." In similar fashion, we might step from "God's will is perfect" to "God's will can never change" to "God will never adjust His actions in light of human behaviors." Every step feels right, since each lies but a short logical step from the next. In other words, a perfect-being approach to creating Christian theology can easily generate a view of sovereignty that eliminates at the outset any possibility of human free agents.

While perfect-theology is attractive, we must not ignore its dangers. Even Plato unwittingly demonstrated just how easily the notion of divine perfection can lead to a portrayal of God utterly alien to biblical revelation. Since Plato reasoned that any change in a perfect God would make God imperfect, he concluded that divine incarnation and earthly visitation would be impossible. Since perfection should also entail perfect self-sufficiency, Plato concluded that God does not love, since love implies a lack of perfect self-satisfaction. God's inner perfection, furthermore, can experience neither joy nor sorrow, since these involve change and imperfection. Given only the abstract principle of perfection, we can reasonably deliver a God quite unlike the loving redeeming Father revealed by the incarnate Son. In other words, building a theology deductively from an abstract principle is ludicrous.

The Bible warns us against building a theology primarily by logical deduction. If we were to set an abstractly defined perfection as the cornerstone and grant it those characteristics commonly associated with it (e.g., uniformity, symmetry, completeness, efficiency, unimprovability), we should puzzle over God's dealings with Israel. God chose an insignificant clan to achieve a worldwide mission, He labored with it through all of its torturous turnings. He revealed Himself at various times and places in different ways, he committed his truth to the limitations of human language. He allowed the presence of false prophets and evil leaders to ravage the chosen people, and He let this chosen nation suffer the ignominy of military defeat and captivity - choices that hardly reflect an abstractly defined perfection. The Christmas story shatters human expectations of what the perfect incarnation of a perfect God would look like. But the ultimate challenge to a deductive theology is the cross, where something utterly unthinkable took place.

Here God is seen to be God in His radical self-giving, descending to the most abject human condition, and in that human obedience, humiliation, suffering and death, being no less truly God than He is in His cosmic rule and glory on the heavenly throne. It is not that God is manifest in heavenly glory and hidden in the human degradation of the cross. The divine identity is known in the radical contrast and conjunction of exaltation and humiliation - as the God who is Creator of all things, and no less truly God in the human life of Jesus.

In other words, when we confess the perfection and sovereignty of God, we must radically surrender ourselves to the whole story of God's self-revelation in order to discern just what God's perfection might actually involve. We must guard against fencing God into a paddock defined by our own notions of divine perfection.

Finally, there is the question of divine foreknowledge and determinism. Many Calvinists have reasoned that God's knowledge of the future, since it is absolutely complete and infallible, looks every detail of the future into place and eliminates the possibility of human free will (as power to choose otherwise). If God knows that I will fly to Chicago next Monday afternoon, then I have no power to do otherwise, since in no case can God's knowledge of the future be proven wrong.

But from our vantage point, it is not entirely clear that God's knowledge of the future must determine the future. Do we know that it isn't possible for God to know something without causing it? Do we know that God can't know what free agents will decide without causing or fixing those decisions? Why isn't it possible for God's knowledge of the future to be flawless and yet no more determine the future than our knowledge of the past determines the past?

There is the problem in the matter of explaining just how God can know future choices of truly free creatures. If God can perfectly predict their actions, aren't they functioning according to some discernible principle? Three facts ought to lesson the problem. First, our inability to explain just how God created the world from nothing, or how He made Mr. Sinai tremble and smoke, or how he raised Jesus from the dead, doesn't prevent us from believing with good reason that God acted in these ways. Similarly, our inability to explain how God might know the future choices of free agents shouldn't immediately render such a belief illegitimate if the Bible attributes such knowledge to God.

Second, it is possible that God knows the future not by peering forward but by knowing the future directly as already present. If God's presence dwells in all places (omnipresence), then perhaps we can speak of God as dwelling in all times, past, present and future.

Third, the collapse of the traditional Newtonian view of space and time should make us all slow to declare what can or cannot happen regarding time and space, especially for God. In other words, we must avoid restricting God's abilities with conceptual limitations of our own making.

God's sovereignty is not denied by Arminians or Wesleyan-Arminians. In fact, it is bolstered by the view that God's power is even manifest in His self-control. Not having to manipulate the affairs of man in no way negates His sovereignty.

In the next article, I will address the philosophical assumptions and ramifications of determinism and why Calvinists have a hard time understanding that God allows people to make choices. This will be the final one in this series on Calvinism as I see a need to address other items of interest.

A NOTE HERE: I will be saving the final article on eternal security for a later date. I plan on introducing this in a different series entitled: "Do We Loose Our Free-Will at Conversion?"

As we have noted in the previous articles, the ramifications of Calvinism simply boil down to determinism, or to be more exact, pre-determinism. The Greeks, in essence, regarded all of nature and man as "determined" as pawns on a chessboard. Augustine merely put God's face on a Platonic worldview and maintained that God "pre-determined" all of mankind.

No matter how one stands on his views of Calvinism, or whether he/she comes down on the side of 1, 2 3, 4 of 5-point Calvinism, consistency, logic and the theological assumptions as a whole demand that pre-determinism is the glue that holds this soteriology together. One cannot be a partial Calvinist! It is inconsistent and contradictory.

This final article in the series will take a closer look at the ramifications of Calvinism on the morality of man. If man has been pre-determined, he cannot be a moral agent. Man would merely be a puppet in God's theater of history.

As I noted as the end of my first article I encountered a theology student at Westminster Theological Seminary prior to my enrollment there who, when asked how he would feel if he knew ahead of time that God pre-determined his six-month old daughter to be consigned to perdition. When he said "Praise be to God for He alone is sovereign," I began to see just how this doctrine literally brainwashes its adherents. It's as if Calvinism pre-determines a mindset that is in bondage, much like Martin Luther once regarded the human will.

When "debating" the issue the obvious inconsistencies in Calvinism became apparent. To Calvinists (2 to 5 point Calvinists), God alone picks who is to be saved and who is to be condemned. Also, if one is not among the elect, he/she cannot help but sin. And yet God blames sinners and punishes them for their unbelief even though they cannot act otherwise. Round and round this young man and I went as we argued matters like this, but the debate always seemed to reach an impasse.

What I have discovered over the years since Jerry and I debated that week in June of 1980 is that there are a number of philosophical categories that shed new light on my numerous encounters with him and other Calvinists. Let's look at the categories and try to understand them. They all pertain to the nature of freedom.

Philosophical analysis often only makes explicit and precise what is implicit and general. Scripture of course does not explicitly state these categories, but that should not count against them in any way. It is also the case that Scripture does not explicitly state the orthodox doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity, but most evangelicals would readily assent to the historic creeds that make the explicit and defend them as crucially important statements of our faith. The classic doctrinal statements on the Trinity and the incarnation employ philosophical categories to make explicit what is implicit in Scripture and help us to interpret it in a coherent fashion.

There are three categories I will address here. They are as follows: hard determinism, libertarian freedom, and soft determinism (which is often called compatibilism). These three terms represent three significantly different views of freedom in relation to determinism. Before I can define these terms properly let me define determinism.

Determinism, simply put, is the view that every event must have happened exactly as it did because of prior conditions. Given these prior conditions and circumstances, the event could not have happened any other way. In philosophical language, these prior events and circumstances represent a sufficient condition for the event to occur. When such a condition is present, the event must occur exactly as it does.

A sufficient condition must be distinguished from a necessary one. To illustrate: A necessary condition for a match to ignite is the presence of oxygen. However, the presence of oxygen is not a sufficient condition for a match to ignite. There are lots of matches - wet ones for example - that do not ignite in the presence of oxygen. However, suppose that in addition to being in the presence of the necessary oxygen, the match is also dry and is properly struck or otherwise exposed to heat. In this case, we have a sufficient condition for the match to ignite. Given these circumstances, it not only will ignite but must ignite. Given these circumstances, it is a matter of causal necessity that the match will light.

To put it another way, determinism affirms what philosophers call the principle of universal causality. In essence this principle claims that all things that happen are caused by sufficient conditions in which nothing that happens could vary in even the slightest detail. Nothing lies outside the pale of universal causality. All events are part of an unbreakable causal chain that stretches back perhaps to infinity. Every link in the chain is strictly caused by the one that preceded it.

Let's consider another picture to help us get a clear picture of the deterministic view of reality. When one considers the motion of the moon as it revolves around the earth, we can predict with great precision the location of the moon three months from now. We can do so because we know both the moon's present position and state as well as the laws that govern the motion of such heavenly bodies. Given these circumstances, it follows as a matter of causal necessity that the moon will be in such and such a location three months from now.

The theory of determinism says that all events are determined just as surely as the motion of the moon and the planets are. Why? Because universal laws govern the rest of the physical world just as they do the motion of the planets. Everything from the largest planets down to the smallest particles of matter is determined to behave just as it does. Of course, we do not yet know all the relevant laws, but if we did, it would be possible in principle to know the future with complete certainty.

This theory of determinism had its heyday in that era of modern science when laws of nature were being discovered with dizzying success and when it seemed that everything could be explained in terms of natural law. More recently, the deterministic view has been shaken by the discovery of fundamental indeterminacy at the quantum level of physics, not to mention chaos theory and the like. Whether this indeterminacy is a serious problem for determinism at the level of larger objects is not clear.

But the point is that the ambition of deterministic theory was to embrace everything under its purview, including human actions! After all, our bodies are physical objects and as such are constituent parts of the larger cosmos governed by natural law. In theory then, our actions are determined just as the motions of the heavenly bodies are, even if we have not yet discovered the relevant laws.

There are other factors besides natural law that are often cited to account for why our choices must occur as they do. Augustine believed that the only factor was God. After all, God set up natural law by his command.

Now what about the three main categories of determinism mentioned above? First, let's start with Hard Determinism.

HARD DETERMINISM

The fundamental assumption of hard determinism is the principle of universal causality: Every event has a sufficient cause and is part of an unbreakable causal chain with a very long (perhaps infinite) history. Second, hard determinism has a distinctive understand of a free act: namely, a free act is one that has not cause and thus no causal history.

One does not have to be a Ph. D. in Epistemology to see what follows from these two claims. If every event has a cause and a free act has no cause, then clearly there are no free acts. This is what hard determinists readily conclude. We are not free, they claim; and moreover, we are not responsible for our actions. Consequently, one deserves neither blame nor praise for one's actions, since all actions are the necessary result of natural law.

Let's put the argument connecting freedom and moral responsibility using this syllogism:

Premise A: If we are morally responsible for our actions, then we must be free.
Premise B: We are not free.
Conclusion A: Therefore, we are not morally responsible for our actions.

In denying that we are free, the hard determinist does not mean to deny that all of us have a subjective sense of freedom - we feel we are free. But these feelings are illusory. In reality, all feelings and the resulting choices were determined by factors long before one is born. Actions are part of a causal chain that stretches back indefinitely into the past and unbreakably forward into the future.

In this view, the hard determinist will insist will so that there would be no rational grounds to blame anyone morally or to scold or punish anyone who breaks the law or commits egregious acts against man or nature. After all, if no one is free and responsible for his or her actions, then no one else is freer to punish anyone who commits a crime. Therefore, no one can be moral who has not already been programmed to be moral. Furthermore, morality, in and of itself, is relative.

LIBERTARIAN FREEDOM

The essence of this view is that a free action is one that does not have a sufficient condition or cause prior to its occurrence. It also holds that some human actions are free in this sense.

Defenders of libertarian freedom hold to this view for a number of reasons, the chief of which is the common experience of deliberation that assumes that our choices are undetermined. When we deliberate, we not only weigh the various factors involved, we also weight them. That is, we decide how important different considerations are in relation to one another. These factors do not have a preassigned weight that everyone must accept. Part of deliberation is sifting through these factors and deciding how much they matter to us. All of this assumes that it really is up to us how we will decide.

Second, it seems intuitively and immediately evident that many of our actions are up to us in the sense that when faced with a decision, both (or more) options are within our power to choose. Of course, our feeling that we have this power could be illusory, as determinists claim. We have to decide between conflicting claims. As is often the case with philosophical judgments of this sort, we must decide which claim is more certain. Libertarians argue that our immediate sense of power to choose between alternative courses of action is more certain and trustworthy than any theory that denies we have this power.

Third, libertarians take very seriously the widespread judgment that we are morally responsible for our actions and that moral responsibility requires freedom. They would assent to the first premise of the argument spelled our above. However, they would deny the second premise and replace it with another one, and then draw a different conclusion, as follows:

Premise A: If we are morally responsible for our actions, then we must be free.
Premise D: We are morally responsible for our actions.
Conclusion B: Therefore, we must be free.

The issue debated between the hard determinists and the libertarian is which second premise is true. According to the libertarian, the deeply rooted human belief in moral responsibility is a strong indication that we are free.

Calvinists may agree that our legal system requires us to be free in the sense necessary for moral responsibility. However, they may object that the freedom involved need not be libertarian freedom and that it is begging the question to assume libertarian freedom in this context.

Here is a major parting of the ways between Calvinists and Arminians or Wesleyans. Both rely on contested philosophical judgments at this point. The conclusions reached by those who believe that people are morarlly responsible even if they are not free to do otherwise will be very different from the conclusion reached by those who are convinced that moral responsibility requires such freedom.

SOFT DETERMINISM (COMPATIBILISM)

The driving motivation behind this view is twofold. First, this view accepts the principle of universal causality and therefore hold that all things are determined. Indeed, the soft determinist is no less committed to determinism than the hard determinist is. It's important to underscore this point because the term "soft determinism" can be misleading to readers unfamiliar with it. The term suggests to them a partial or halfhearted determinism, a sort of quasi-determinism.

So what is the difference between soft and hard determinism? The difference is in the second motivation that drives soft determinism. In addition to affirming universal causality, soft determinists also believe that we are responsible for our actions, and they agree that we must be free in some sense if this is the case. In other words, soft determinists want to affirm both complete determinism and freedom. This position is also called compatibilism because it holds that freedom and determinism can be compatible.

Confused? Well, to avoid this confusion one needs to know that soft determinists define freedom differently than do both libertarians and hard determinists. Clearly, if a free act has no cause, as hard determinists claim, then we cannot coherently affirm both that there are free acts and that everything is causally determined. Just as clearly, if a free act has no sufficient cause prior to it occurrence, as libertarians say, then we cannot coherently hold both that there are such free acts and that all things are determined by prior causes and conditions.

Fortunately for soft determinists, they are guilty of no such incoherence. They offer a very different account of freedom, one that is carefully crafted to ensure that it is compatible with determinism. To do this, their arguments define an act as free if it meets three conditions:

1 - It is not compelled or caused by anything external to the agent who performs it.
2 - However, it is caused by something internal to the agent who performs it, namely, a psychological state such as a beef. a desire or, more precisely, a combination of these two.
3 - The agent performing it could have acted differently, it the agent had wanted to do so.

Although this definition seems rather straightforward, I offer these words of explanation. First, to say an act is compelled or caused by something external to the agent is to say that the act was forced against his will. For instance, suppose someone picked you up, carried you into a voting booth and forced your hand to push a button indicating a vote for Barack Obama. This would not qualify as a free act because it would violate the first condition.

Second, an act is free if it has the right sort of immediate cause - in particular, a psychological internal to the agent. Now given the thesis of determinism, these psychological states are themselves caused by prior conditions and states of affairs. Indeed, given those prior conditions, no other psychological states are even possible. Something external to the agent ultimately caused these internal psychological states, but at the time of the act, these thoughts, desires and so on are owned by the agent in such a way that he willingly acts on them. In other words, the agent is merely acting in character when he chooses as he or she does. His character determines the choices, and he could not will or act otherwise given his character.

Finally, we must keep these points in mind to understand the third condition for a free action in the soft determinists' definition, or else we may be misled by the condition concerning the agent's ability to have acted differently if he or she had wanted to do so. The crucial point to keep in mind is that the agent could not want to do otherwise than he or she in fact does. If the agent had wanted to do differently, he could have done so, but it was impossible for him to want to do differently, given the prior causes and conditions that strictly determined his psychological states and character.

The implication in the soft determinists argument simple is that even though a person is not compelled against his will to commit a crime, rather the immediate causes of his crime were internal psychological states, flowing out of the character that had been formed in him. Moreover, he could have chosen differently if he had wanted to do so. But he could not have wanted to choose differently, given the character he actually had. But it is still true that they could have chosen differently if he had wanted to do so, that is, if he had been determined to have different desires, a different character and so on.

The point is that it does not matter what causes our character and the internal psychological states and beliefs involved. According to determinism, everything that happens is causally necessary. Given prior conditions, things could not happen any differently than they do. Causal chains are often complicated, and it makes no difference what links make up the chains that produce our character.

Theologically, the difference between soft and hard determinism would be, simply put, that soft determinism gets God off the hook and therefore cannot be blamed for a man's sins. Hard determinism, by extension, demands that God is the author of evil and is responsible for man's sins.

Calvinists insist that God is sovereign. So do Arminians and Wesleyans. Calvinists preach that God is all knowing. So do Arminians and Wesleyans. No matter what side of the determinists argument the Calvinist comes down upon, determinism denies free-will (ironically so does Arminianism) and leaves not room for a person to be free to make choices (which is where the Arminian departs from the Calvinist).

This philosophical and logical assumption of Calvinism is that we are all puppets on a string, pawns on a chessboard, trick dogs in a circus and robots being manipulated in one sort or another. I must assert here that I believe that if this is true, God is not a God at all, but a insidious and demonic individual who is not exercising his sovereignty, but playing games with His creation much like a little boy playing with his army men in a trench and blowing some of them up at will.

Calvinists would say, God can do that! Arminians and Wesleyans do say, but God so loved the world that He wanted people, viz. mankind, to make a choice to have a relationship with Him. To put it succinctly, from a human point of view, one cannot have a relationship with puppets, marionettes and army men, He can and does have a relationship with those who freely give their lives to Him. Then them, God gives eternal life.

NOTE: There will be a series to come on Eternal Security entitled: "Do We Loose Our Freewill at Conversion?" coming this summer. This series will address that final point of Calvinism which is held dear by almost every Southern Baptist and, by extension, all conservative Baptists around the world.