Calvinism vs. Arminianism

My class is over with! Woot! Now it's time to leave some fun stuff. This was my final paper for Theology 2 on God's intelligence. Enjoy!

Chosen But Free Reflection – The Supremacy of God’s Intelligence

In chapter three of Chosen But Free, titled “Viewing the Alternatives”, we find Norman Geisler spelling out two schools of thought regarding salvation: Calvinism and Arminianism. From a simple study, one would know that Calvinism favors “TULIP” (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints), a system of belief that favors God’s complete sovereignty in salvation over creation with little respect to human choice. In fact, within Calvinism, human choice, if it did exist at all, wouldn’t matter, because God’s sovereignty would rule over anything else a human could choose to do. It does make sense that a perfectly perfect God with absolute sovereignty would have this, but another system known as Arminianism favors something on the other side of the spectrum. Arminianism does not discount God’s sovereignty as much as it recognizes human choice. Within it, human choice is still second to God’s sovereignty, but it does keep respects to God’s limitations; those being ones he possesses or has chosen to possess. On the extremes, both system fail scripturally. If you can imagine a spectrum, the closer that you get away from the extremes and more to the middle, the better off you seem to be. Hence, the best way both logically and scripturally to view this subject is that mankind is chosen, but at the same time free. Today, I would like to argue against both Calvinist’s and Arminianist’s largest failure in their systems of belief, and I believe that failure to be the disrespect to the intelligence of God. This will be shown by exploring the Calvinist’s failure to link God’s foreknowledge and selection, the Arminianist’s acceptance of God’s foreknowledge and selection, and finally God’s indivisible nature and perfect knowledge in history.

Calvinist’s Failure

The first thing that will be shown is how God logically works within his foreknowledge. On page 43 we see and incredible chart that draws out how God works in both being sovereign and allowing choice logically. Geisler starts by stating that Jesus both foreknew he was to die on the cross (based on the Old Testament prophets as stated by Jesus in his teachings) and at the same time stated that nobody took his life from him, but that he choose to lay it down. If God is omniscient, he would have known that Jesus would die on the cross in the future. God is not limited to time, but mankind is, and so with Jesus taking on human flesh, he too was limited to time with his visit to the earth. This would mean that Jesus would have to die on the cross in this time, even though he chose to lay down his life; and in fact that’s what the scriptures say; Jesus did choose to freely lay down his life. Therefore Jesus foreknew what he was going to choose to do. God is the creator of all that is, he is the uncaused first cause, and is all-knowing, and yet he still made a choice to die to save human kind. His actions were not dependant on human choice, however they didn’t need to be; his choice involved his own actions and his alone. Therefore, God foreknows all things with respects to his other actions, both past and future. It would be then safe to assume that since in creation (an action) that God would know what his creation would do in the future, and maybe that was because in his divine intelligence he knew he would have to create people a certain way, give them certain traits, put them in certain cultures, link them with certain parents, etc. in order for his purposes to come to pass. It is already well-known that God has an infallible plan that will come to completion. In order for God to have some kind of “real relationship” with his creation he would have to at some point limit himself to allow choice, but at the same time keep control of his plan, and I believe that this is through his absolute, perfect, and holy intelligence, something Calvinists don’t give God enough credit for.

Calvinists have a huge problem linking this intelligence with what God chooses to do because they believe that in doing so it puts human choice above God’s sovereignty. They unlink his choice with his foreknowledge by saying that God created people and chose only some of them to be saved, others he created to just die (simply based on God’s preference and nothing else). Calvinists will say that men have a “choice” in their salvation; fortunately if a man who has been chosen to be saved “chooses” to turn from it, God will hit him with irresistible grace until he “accepts” it. Therefore, no matter what, God is in control of man’s salvation all the way. Now, not to get too personal, but if I was God, and I created mankind in order to be in some sort of relationship with them, and in order to do that chose to lay down my life in love for them, for some reason I think I would want a human to freely chose to love me back. There seems to be some sort of illustration at hand where a human being continually says no to God but because God chose him, he at some point would have to say, “I guess I can’t resist the irresistible”. Where is repentance in that? Where is grace through faith? Where is the accepting of love? If human beings are (by either default or action) sinners (both accepted in different sects of Calvinism) it would seem that they need to at some point (at least) apologize for their sins. Both unconditional election and irresistible grace negate it!

The safer (and more logical) way to look at this is that God in some way has allowed us to not only be chosen, but also free to love him back. We were free to choose the fruit in the garden, and we are free to choose to repent. Our repentance doesn’t save us, only Christ’s work does, but repentance is that avenue to salvation when linked with faith. At the same time, God foreknew all of it, and in some way (I’ve have tried to spell out my version of it) still holds the steering wheel of sovereignty in order that his plan will come to pass. The Calvinist’s failure is that they fail to recognize how intelligent God really is in both his creativity and his foreknowledge.

Arminianist’s Acceptance of God’s Foreknowledge

At this point, it seems like it would be easy to say that the Calvinists are wrong and the Armenians are right because a lot of evangelicals hold to a more Armenian world view than Calvinistic one. Unfortunately there are flaws in the Armenians view as well. First, the accuracy of their argument will be discussed, and secondly will come their inaccuracies.

Geisler points out that extreme Calvinists tend to use a certain argument against Arminianists regarding God’s foreknowledge. Calvinists argue that God’s foreknowledge is in no way linked to his divine selection of the elect. Their reasoning for this is that if they were linked together, God would be at the mercy of people’s actions, and in a sense not be completely sovereign. God would not limit himself to who would choose him because that would put people in the driver’s seat for his plan and not Himself. It, in a sense, dethrones God and puts him under the creation. For the Calvinist, “God’s knowledge cannot be dependant on our free choices”. Fortunately, I have a counter argument. In my view of God, I don’t see just a hierarchy between God and man, where God is the king and he just steps on the scene to govern. If he did, I would see the need to believe he would take control and practice almost dictatorship. What Calvinists forget to remember is that God is not only king, but he is more importantly creator. His hierarchy is not just because he is above us but instead because he has created us. I believe that God’s knowledge then can depend on our free choices because our choices (even though they are “our own”) are still being influenced by the creativity of the creator. God can do whatever he wants within the creation, and I strongly believe that through his creation he can give us choice but at the same time have that divine influence on us. He knows our futures because he knows us. Psalm 139 is very clear that he knew us throughout the creation process and I would venture to bet that he knows us better than we know ourselves. Therefore, God can limit his foreknowledge to our actions because he has also influenced our actions through his creative creativity. I like what the Oracle says to Neo in the Matrix Reloaded; she says to him that “You didn’t come here to make a choice, you already made the choice. Now you have to try and understand it”. I think that along the same lines we too have made a choice, and not only does God already know that choice but also why it was made, because he’s intelligent enough to know; he’s had a hand in it since our creation.

With that being said, the Armenian view is not completely flawless. Within extreme Arminianism there is a huge inaccuracy. Extreme Arminianism states that God’s sovereignty is always second to human choice, and there I believe there is some danger. No matter where you stand on the spectrum, it is absolutely necessary to understand that above all else God’s sovereignty must take precedence over our own choice. God is the infinite creator and we are the finite creation. God truly is the “author of all” and even though there is choice involved in it; it in no way will ever take precedence over God’s own choice. It would seem with this being in place, and with my view still being that choice exists within the sovereignty of God; a paradox is created. I will throw a phrase out there (which I don’t know if somebody else has already penned or not) that God’s “chosen but free” attitude towards us is an “unwound paradox”. It is a paradox to think that we are bound to a plan but free in it, but to God it makes sense and that’s all that matters. God will always be infinite in his knowledge and we will always be finite in it, so we may never know. The extreme Armenian view and the extreme Calvinistic view will never work because it is man’s attempt to open finite humanity’s brain to something that we may never know. Scripture is clear that it has to be somewhere in the middle and nowhere else.

God is indivisible and has been consistent through history

Within this wheel of an argument, there are some things that need to be stated regarding God’s perfection. Scripture has been consistent from page one in teaching two things: (1) God is sovereign over his creation and (2) God gave men the freedom to choose. No where in the Bible will you find a passage that shows one quality completely eliminating the other. I have already shown that both God’s sovereignty and our choice are both influenced by the creative creativity of the Creator anyway.

Many Calvinists and Arminianists will whether God has either been able to separate his choice for the elect with his foreknowledge or not. Briefly this will be taken on. Geisler will argue against the Calvinists here by saying that “God’s foreknowledge and his fordetermination cannot be separated. God is one simple (indivisible) being.” These two traits of God are actually one in the same because God cannot be divided. Therefore, the extreme Calvinist view does not work. Geisler also brings forth a profound argument when he says that “He did not determine that they would be forced to perform free acts. What is forced is not free, and what is free is not force. In brief, we are chosen but free.” God cannot force somebody to love him just like he cannot force somebody to accept his grace. In doing so he has created what the heralded genius Mark MacLean quotes as “robots”. Indeed again, choice and sovereignty are present.

In conclusion, I believe that the largest flaw between the Calvinistic and Armenian debate is the lack of appreciation for the intelligence of God. Again, we are finite beings trying to understand something that Infinite Being has chosen not to explicitly explain. As believers, one must understand that God is completely sovereign and that he has allotted humans choice within that sovereignty at the same time. How that works is a beautiful mystery known only to the infinite Creator. God has orchestrated an unwound paradox which since the creation of everything seems to have worked pretty well. God is in control of everything, and he loves his creation and desires their love enough to give them the option to choose him or not. In this, mankind is chosen, and also free.