Friday, October 06, 2006

Calvin's Providence - puppets or people?




I think I have written on this before, and if you are tired of the debate don't worry about it, but providence to me is the most confusing and most exciting doctrine in Christian theology from my perspective (I know other people will favour Trinity and such, but I am a Calvinist in the 21st century so happen to be most oriented towards Providence). And I think this is a continuing issue of some importance since we all seek to be assured that God is in control and that He will triumph ultimately (even after such events as the Amish incident). What I want to do is stay away from emotive arguments such as "I don't like that kind of God (and world)" and keep to a more rational account, of course taking into account that just because something is rational does not mean it is right. All I want to do here is try and defend a Calvinistic form of providence against the objection "That makes us puppets with no free will!", a comment I heard just recently from a close friend. So on to the show!

A few words from Calvin first:

"For he is deemed omnipotent, not because he can indeed act, yet sometimes ceases and sits in idleness, or continues by a general impulse that order of nature which he previously appointed; but because, governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so regulates all things that nothing takes place without his deliberation." (Institutes, I.xvi.3)

"Let him, therefore, who would beware of this infidelity [grounding causality to motion of the stars] ever remember that there is no erratic power, or action, or motion in creatures, but that they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by him." (Institutes, I.xvi.3)

So what we have in Calvin is a total providence, such that nothing happens without God's positive control (whether that is willing permission or something else is left aside). God decrees or ordains all events in the most meticulous manner. The natural response to this is of course "Then we are all just puppets and free from all blame for our actions!" Now there are a number of ways to approach this objection, but let's have a go at it from the free will angle and see what we get.

Free will. Everyone knows (or should know) that we must have free will of some sort in order to make sense of what we all experience in everyday life. We all make choices and these are owned by us in such a manner that we can honestly say "I did that." No one, especially not Calvin, would dispute this. Free will, in some sense, is necessary for the doctrine of sin and atonement, along with other Christian principles, let alone mental satisfation that we lead meaningful lives. So no one in the Christian tradition should dispute the fact that we have free will.

The question is, what kind of free will is it? Here is where the debate begins. Calvin maintains that we have free will insomuch as our wills are not constrained. He does not believe we have free will in the sense that we can do whatever we like. Here is a trivial example of this: I have free will to jump in the air or not to jump in the air. I do not have the free will to jump 100 feet(probably even 2 feet, to be honest!) in the air. My free will concerning my desire to jump is constrained by my non-ability to jump a certain height. I could change this to a degree (say by practicing) but only to a degree (it is physically impossible for me to jump 100 feet without assistence). But it would be insane to say that I did not have free will when I chose to jump! The issue of free will then depends on how constrained the will is. Morally Calvin thinks the will is pretty constrained, but I want to focus in on the metaphysical constraints on the will because of a meticulous providence.

To focus down then, imagine coming to a fork in the road. For simplicity's sake let's assume there is an unclimable wall on all sides except these two paths before you and the one you came from (basically you are in a maze). When you come to the fork you have basically four options: go left, go right, go back, or sit and meditate. Now there are a ton of options that you can think of but are not allowed to do: climb the wall, go through the wall, jump over the wall, become a Blue Whale. But that does not remove your freedom, for your freedom is ultimately placed in the fulfillment of your desires - you always have a limited number of options and you are free insomuch as you own or desire a certain one. So eventually you will decide which one of the paths to take, but the most important part is not the fact that you chose between one from another, it is that you desired or made that certain on your own. In this sense the fact that other options are available is besides the point; only one options is really necessary to excercise free will in the basic level of accepting or desiring a path.

And I think this is exactly what the metaphysical constaint of Calvinistic (and traditional) Providence means: you only have one option based on God's decree but that does not mean your freedom is nonexistent; it may mean it is constrained to a great degree, but then all freedom is constrained. The fact is that we all make the option ours by owning it or desiring it. What this comes down to is that free will is defined by Calvin as the absence of coercion. In the above example, you would not have free will if someone forced you by spear point to go in a certain direction because you would always be able to say "I am not desiring this!" even as you moved. But since there is no physical (let's leave out non-physical coercion for now, please) external agency then you are free to do what you desire, even if there is only one thing to desire, as in the case of Providence.

So we have free will in the sense of not being coerced and can excercise this free will in the sense of being responsible even if there is no other choice. It is the element of coercion that destroys causal responsibility. But I hear someone saying "It seems like coercion is involved, because God is the ultimate determiner of all events!" Good point, let's investigate.

Calvin's classical response to this objection is to seek a dual causality or multiple causal levels metaphysics. Basically there are always two active agents in any causal choice (involving humans, that is): God and me. Both are necessary and sufficient. But who do these two work together so that we need not appeal to pure coincidence that all of God's choices are also our choices? Well, that's tricky, but we might have a shot of explaining it by desciribing the nature of the different levels. Let's have a simple description of a certain event as follows: God ordains and I choose to do something. The first part (God's ordaining) is rather straightforward and Scripturally sound, it is the second that is troublesome, for how can God's ordination allow me to "choose" something freely? Remember first that freely means without compulsion, so it means that I desire or own something. More specifically Calvin breaks down the human choosing into three components (following scholastic thought - which may not be perfect but can be helpful): the will, the habit, and the choice. The will is the function in man which allows us to choose something, and we have already said it is free in the Calvinist sense of non-coerced. The choice is the actual decision made which leads to action (at this point the outcome of the choice is irrelevant since we are focusing on choosing not whether we actually accomplish our choice). But the key point is that there is something between the will and the choice. Our will gives us the capacity to choose while the choice is the decision - but the background or "reason" of the choice is our habit, or our desire. Now as long as our desire is our own then we have chosen "freely". And this is where Calvinism finds its ability to reconcile God's ordination and our free choosing, in my mind.

In a simple way, all events could be described as follows: "God ordains that Adam wills to choose x." This is where the levels come in: God forms our wills in such a way that our desires are towards certain things (namely, whatever happens in the world, whatever choices we end up choosing), but it is our choice which is made based on our desires. This is not to make us free in a libertarian sense from God, it merely means that God has constrained our choices to one option (remember the one path taken) but it is our choice and our desire that chooses that option. Basically God desires that we desire to choose x. This means that God does not coerce us because coercion must occur at the choice level (we can desire something differently than what is choosen in coercion), not at the desires level. So God forms our will to certain desires, but it is our choices (based on our desires) which make the happenings of the world. That is why we must always have both God and man in any description of an event while discussing providence; God wills/desires/chooses that man desires to choose x.

To give an everday example of this (which will not be perfect but may ground the discussion a little better) we can think of a parent raising a child to desire a certain thing. This happens all the time. For instance, I was raised to desire to keep dry when it is raining. I didn't have to be, in some places (probably England, where rain is just a constant experience) this desire wouldn't be necessary because it would be impossible to fill or there was never rain (in Antarctica, for instance). But when it starts raining I do not feel forced to run inside or wear a rain coat, I am just choosing based on a desire implanted in my by my parents or whatever other place I got that desire from. I am totally free in my choice to run inside, but the choice is based on a desire I did not initially determine (it was given to me). It might be the same with God - except that we are still acting in the early stages of practicing choices since we are fallen creatures and a new kingdom is coming. God plants desires into us for a certain action and we choose based on that desire, but it is us who make the choice. We are therefore responsible for the choice and the action which occurs or doesn't occur, but the event was ordained by God at the earlier level.

It seems to me that this dual-causality Calvinist account allows some insight into how we can hold together consistently the two Biblical maxims: All things are ordained by God and at the same time we are free creatures responsible for oour decisions. This doesn't totally remove blame from God for the evil in the world - but then he is perfectly happy to take a certain amount of blame as seen in the death of his Son on the cross. This explanation does not answer the question of why God planted certain desires in us towards certain actions (Amish shootings, for instance), but that question is unanswerable according to Paul ("Who are you, O man?). This account does answer the more immediate question of how Calvin's providence does not make us puppets, and I hope this account of non-coerced free will and desired choice brings some rationality (not all, of course) to that answer.

12 Comments:

At 10:27 am, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

I feel the need to state some ground rules when posting on Calvin. Here they are:

1. If you intend to read this post with the prejudice of "Calvin is evil and most of what he said is wrong and stupid/evil" then don't waste your time, you won't get anything out of this. Go praise your self-righteousness or something.

2. If you want to actually engage in this post then try starting off with a presupposition that goes something like this: "Calvin is regarded as one of the greatest Christian thinkers, maybe he is right, let me see what he has to say (or what Adam interprets/says he has to say)."

Basically I would love for people to read and comment if they are open to Calvin's view being correct (that doesn't mean that you have to agree with it in the end, but at least allow it some possibility of being correct when you start reading!), but I have absolutely no desire to see comments from people with a Calvin-hating fetish which only models a lack of Christian humilty and charity.

Does that make sense? Shouldn't have to say that but seems like I do.

 
At 11:45 am, Blogger JMC said...

"This doesn't totally remove blame from God for the evil in the world - but then he is perfectly happy to take a certain amount of blame as seen in the death of his Son on the cross."

This strikes me as a conflation of two types of blame: one of genuine guilt in the first instance and one of genuine non-guilt in the second. That seems to me to make a big difference and present a problem when milk truck drivers decide to shoot Amish girls at their school.

I followed you right up to this point, expected a decisive account of either 1) why God is ultimately responsible for evil (an unequivocally heterodox view) or 2) why God is in no way responsible for evil (an unequivocally orthodox view). Yet, I was dissatisfied with your failure to distinguish what I consider to be very different sorts of guilt. Maybe you could elaborate a bit and convince me that you are right.

 
At 1:41 pm, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

J. Morg - Yes, I think you are right. I don't think the cross really fits in the argument at all. The more I read it the more I wonder why I threw that point in. Let me try and work it in here though:

God is not the effective cause of evil, that is the orthodox position. But he is certainly in some sense responsible for the actions that occur in the world, given the total providence view. He is not morally culpable, I don't think because of the difference in intentions and the like, but there is in some sense a responsibility since evil does not get the last word in the plan.

His faithfulness to creation means that he has made certain promises (eternal covenant in reformed terminology - although I don't think this is essential) so there is some sense in which he is responsible to right the evil in the world. Not responsible to us but to himself because of his covenant promises and their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Seen in this way the cross is in a sense his taking responsibility for the renewal of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is made responsible for the sins of the world and therefore God also becomes responsible for them, and deals with them accordingly. Now we are into some heavy speculation about the death of God and God on God action, but I think God's willingness to send the Son shows some sense in which he accounts himself responsible (to himself). Of course you can chose to answer that this wipes out the idea of grace since then Jesus' death was not entirely free - but that just means you don't except God's covenant with himself as gracious.

I think you make a good point to remember that Jesus was "made" responsible by God, that God accepted responsibility in salvation by sending his Son, but there are some contentious issues.

As far as God having no responsibility for evil in general, I was thinking of a quote from Paul Helm:
"There is no plausability of the view that, if one person causes another to act voluntarily, then that person bears some of the responsibility for what occurs. But this by itself is not sufficient to rule out the compatability of the 'no-risk' view of providence and human responsibility, since it is evident that God does bear some responsibility for what happens in the universe he has created. We may even say that God bears ultimate responsibility for it, since everything that occurs is ultimately due to him. This is true on any orthodox theistic view of God's relation as creator to the universe, whether deterministic or not." (Helm, The Providence of God, 176).

At this point Calvin would probably (with Helm) opt for the greater good defense with a good dose of humility, a position which I think is better than the free will defense. I don't know if there are any other arguments (free will defense vs. greater good) but I tend to go with greater good; although it has trouble of its own, obviously.

Good point about the cross, I hope I made it a little clearer although I think I mishandled it in the post.

 
At 3:46 pm, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

I don't know if that reply made any sense after reading it. I guess I would summarize God's responsibility in two ways from above:

1. God is responsible in some sense for all events since he causes them by ordering our desires in ways which will make evil events occur. He is not directly responsible since we are the choosing agents, but he takes some responsibility in the sense that he owns up to causing them. This does not make him evil (which is impossible) since they are actually ordained towards a greater good (on that defense) or were allowed because of a greater good (on the free will defense), so we can't seperate the individual events we see now from their whole part in world. So this is a general responsibility for all events and before all events.

2. The responsibility on the cross is a post-event responsibility and guilt since Jesus is not initially guilty but becomes sin (and therefore guilt) for us. That makes Jesus responsible for our sins and therefore recieves our punishment, etc. I don't know if the atonement works if Jesus is actually not "made" responsible for our sins in that he just recieves the punishment, but I am not an expert on the atonement by any stretch of the imagination, so I could be wrong.

Basic point is that cross responsibility (and guilt, if any) is after the event and general responsibility in all events is before and during them. I think that is clearer, but I don't know.

 
At 4:15 pm, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

One more thing! I suppose we can't forget Acts 2:23 - "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men."

In that case, the fact that Jesus was innocent (in some sense) makes the cross the most outrageous evil event ever committed, and yet we are told that God directly ordained it (in the Calvinist reading), so that God is responsible for the cross in some sense as well as the people who crucified him (as well as the people who necessitated his crucifixion - us - because of God's redemptive plan, etc.). Okay, I am going to stop commenting on my own post! I just love this stuff!

 
At 2:05 am, Blogger E. Twist said...

Hans,

I'm failing to find the wherewith all to sufficiently assent to the concept of choice within the state of singular options.

"you only have one option based on God's decree but that does not mean your freedom is nonexistent"

It all tilts on this for me and I'm not yet convinced by Calvin's metaphysics. Of the three components the third seems arbitrary under Calvin's doctrine of Providence.

Your examples are fine and I certainly find Calvin provocative on all these points; faithfulness to the biblical witness is essential. Yet "choice" ultimately looks to be a ruse under Calvin's associations. My feeble mind sees the singular force of God's desires upon my own as simply a "soft" coercion. Which, in the end, leaves me feeling a little like Kermit the Frog.

e.

 
At 5:34 am, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

Soft coercion - maybe. Again, Calvin would stress that you are making a choice, but it is a choice based on your desires and those desires are given to you by God. So you are totally free* in your choice, but God is totally in control since he is governing your desires.

Obviously there are loose ends in this since God is incomprehensible in his relation to us; all Calvin is trying to do is give a go at reconciling the Biblical revelation with our experience - and I think he does a pretty good job.

Kermit I don't know, since he didn't have any will (constrained or not constrained), but you have been described as pottery and clay in revelation, so there is some merit to it!

 
At 10:09 am, Blogger CharlesPeirce said...

Is providence really more exciting to you than resurrection?!

I’ve read very little Calvin and all my familiarity with him comes from his theology as filtered through 21st century evangelicals, so I’ll try to drop any preconceptions I had and grant you expertise in this conversation. I’m afraid I won’t be able to weave my comments into a coherent narrative, so I’ll just number them, which will also infuriate RJ, which is sweet.

(1) Strictly speaking, it doesn’t seem that a Calvin(ist) understanding of Providence “makes” us see ourselves as puppets with no free will, because if it did, you would say “Calvinism says we are puppets with no free will,” and you didn’t. So you’re right! Your thesis is correct.

(2) You write: “In a simple way, all events could be described as follows: "God ordains that Adam wills to choose x." This is where the levels come in: God forms our wills in such a way that our desires are towards certain things (namely, whatever happens in the world, whatever choices we end up choosing), but it is our choice which is made based on our desires.”

That sounds deistic to me—God winds our minds up and then sets us loose. No? Where is God during and after the choice is made?

(3) You write: “Basically there are always two active agents in any causal choice (involving humans, that is): God and me.”

You know that I am Christocentric to a fault, but it seems to me that a more effective metaphysics would not take this sharp distinction as its starting point, but would instead look at the fact that we become a part of the body of Christ. Paul’s discussion about the body in Corinthians is certainly more about ecclesiastical roles than it is about metaphysical matters, but I think there is some worthwhile theology in it as well. What do you think about that?

(4) You write: “Obviously there are loose ends in this since God is incomprehensible in his relation to us; all Calvin is trying to do is give a go at reconciling the Biblical revelation with our experience - and I think he does a pretty good job.”

Yeah—giving a go at incomprehensible things is tough work. I don’t know. What does Jesus have to say about this?

(5) Check out Peter Strawson’s take on determinism (granted, from a philosophical and not theological position, but still worthwhile.) I found the whole essay online! Awesome!

“If I am asked which [side of the determinism debate I fall on], I must say it is the first of all, the party of those who do not know what the thesis of determinism is. But this does not stop me from having some sympathy with the others, and a wish to reconcile them. Should not ignorance, rationally, inhibit such sympathies? Well, of course, though darkling, one has some inkling—some notion of what sort of thing is being talked about. This lecture is intended as a move towards reconciliation; so, it is likely to seem wrongheaded to everyone.”

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwstrawson1.htm

(6) Maybe providence done in an exhortative way requires eschatology. What do you think about that? Kant thought God had to exist to bring justice, since justice is often conspicuously lacking in this world. We don’t exactly agree with that, but we don’t disagree, either. (I don’t teach it, but I don’t not teach it!)

 
At 7:40 am, Blogger JMC said...

“Again, Calvin would stress that you are making a choice, but it is a choice based on your desires and those desires are given to you by God. So you are totally free* in your choice, but God is totally in control since he is governing your desires.”

Now, it seems to me that this has at least three implications, all fairly unsatisfying conclusions:

1) In many instances, God is still the cause of evil, although perhaps not the immediate cause though. I commit a large number of sins because those actions satisfy a particular desire. I think that is problematic.
2) This still doesn’t get past the issue of experience vs. biblical account. I experience my desires as being formed in contexts through slow processes of habituation, through the influence of others, etc. I don’t often experience God forming or giving me my desires. Now, that isn’t necessarily problematic, but it does I think require that a thoroughgoing Calvinist be ready to discount experience (which is something I just can’t do).
3) Related to point 2, it probably means that our entire understanding of human agency and the self are deeply flawed if Calvin is right. In fact, it means that just about every account of human agency and the self – even those predating Calvin – are deeply flawed. Again, not necessarily problematic, but it does I think require that a thoroughgoing Calvinist be ready to discount a large part of Western thought on the subjects (which is something I just can’t do).

I wonder what your thoughts are about any of that? Again, I am willing to be convinced, but these are the points at which your argument as of yet has failed to do so.

 
At 10:05 am, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

Charles - great points! Let me give them a quick response after a little thought. Numbering is also fantastic!

1. Okay, whatever! I think I can make poor statements which do not reflect the theological position (there may be a sense in which we are puppets, I don't think so though), but I appreciate your validation of the thesis!

2. Deistic. Hmmm, I have never heard the Calvinist position called that, but there is a time for everything! I guess I would dsay since God is always at work shaping us (our desires are not eternally set to one thing: love people) and therefore is constantly modifying our desires to conform to circumstances (which he also controls: say birds flying etc.) I think he is leaving very little to "set loose". He may be seen to set us loose as far as choices are concerned, but that is the main issue, right?

3. Yes, that is an excellent point. I would want to emphasize a metaphysical union to Christ in Pauline texts (although many would resist - protestants!) and so in a sense there should be only one starting point. Where a double level of causation is important to me is (1) the Creator-creature distinction: we are still seperate from the Triune God (although maybe not forever! Deification!) and (2) old man versus new man (sounds Lutheran!) - we are still working out the battle between the flesh and spirit, so there is almost a double agency in that, in a sense. Does that help? You are Christomonic to a fault, Barth!

4. Jesus loves when we try to lisp and baby talk about him and his other halves in theology! Humilty always required!

5. Didn't read this, sure it is good and sounds wrongheaded to everyone!

6. Eschatology - yes, I think this is necessary, you Bultmann and Pannenberg lover! I think the Greater Good defense of evil is nothing other than an eschatological argument, so it may fit in there. Justice, I don't know, maybe something less legal would be good?

Thanks for these corrections, I think they further shed light onto the debate. I hope my comments don't sound dismissive but rather thinking further along your lines within this framework. Let me know if I have misinterpreted them, but I think they all fall into this framework quite nicely.

 
At 10:22 am, Blogger Hans-Georg Gadamer said...

J. Morg - Thanks for this! Let me take a shot at working with these implications, hopefully making them less unattractive or at least possible.

1. Well, I think that unless someone goes for the evil as privation theory of Augustine (and even there) you will always have some responsibility for evil placed on God. This doesn't seem totally contradictory to me or out of line with Scripture (as in Gen, 50 and Acts. 2). So I admit that within this framework I have to say that God has "some" responsibility for evil in the world. The question is how much do you count as unacceptable? I think to say that God uniformally and uniquelly causes evil (Zwingli in "On Providence") is unacceptable, but in allowing him to "actively permit" evil to occur while not being the active agent of evil seems allowable especially when coupled with the Greater Good defense. You may not find this acceptable, and that is fine but I think it is reasonable and allowable in a Scriptural framework. I am pretty convinced that the Free Will defense which removes all responsibility also seems to remove too much from God, which I find unacceptable. But I am more theological than anthropologically oriented, I guess.

2. Discounting experience, that is an important point. Whatever our theory is it should not be blatnantly contradictory to our experience. As to the specific case of not experiencing God forming our desires, I am not sure what that would feel like as opposed to him not forming our desires. If God forms all our desires through various means (means are important), and I think this account needs him to form all our desires, then we wouldn't expect to "feel" or "experience" anything other than what we experience. So I don't think my experience of desire formation is in contradiciton to this framework, it just means I have a different view of what is going on. Does that make sense?

On the more general issue of experience informing theory, I think there is truth to this, but I would not take it as far as being determinative since most of us are constantly fooled by "our experiences." Fallen nature is one reason, I suppose; but more uncontroversially our natural finitiude means we do not experience things rightly all the time. So for instance modern physics is forcing us to re-examing what we call "reality" as experience (time, space, causation) and is offering radically different conclusions. That is just one example. Add to that the fact that no one experiences things without an interpretive grid or framework and I begin to feel rather suspicious of "experience" as a guide in very theoretical and difficult matters, God's providence on area I would include in difficult matters. Besides, if experience is really the rule of the day more than theological theory we end up affirming speaking in tongues and other such encounters. Do you want to do that?

3. I am not quite sure of which parts of Western tradition would have to be significantly changed, if any, under this framework. I think if we understand human nature as dualistic (body and soul - ouch Charles!) or if we understand reality as ultimately non-physical in base level (via Newman's sacramental framework) everything in divine causation and formation seems allowable through "spirit-causation". Clumsy term, but I just wanted to flag up how thinking within the Western "Platonic" tradition is easily accomodated in this model. If you could give me a more specific struggle for Western tradition that this violates I might change my mind, but at this point I am hesitant to say that a thinker so steeped in Western philosophic tradition (as Calvin) would be able to radically remove his thought from it. This isn't Heidegger here.

Does that help to make sense of the implications? I think you are right in the first one in a sense, but the others may be more nuanced. Let me know.

 
At 5:41 am, Blogger W. Travis McMaken said...

Nice post. I have done a bit of study in this area, specifically with reference to how Calvin fits between Barth and Augustine. In my humble opinion, you have given Calvin just about the most generous reading possible. Where you see some kind of double agency (which is without a doubt what Calvin was looking for), I see a slip into determinism. I remain convinced of this, despite my intense love and appreciation of Calvin (just check out my blog if you need convincing).

In any case, keep up the good work. I’m glad to have found your site.

 

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