Right, that I get and isn’t what I’m struggling to understand. Sure, God ordains actions and gives creatures the will so they freely wish to do them. They act freely and yet God ordained it. Both. I get that.
What I don’t get is how this fits with other things you say where some things are outside of one’s nature (such as sinning for the glorified) while others are within their nature and can be chosen (such as which non-sinful activity a glorified person chooses). You seem to be talking about natures and wills that aren’t so determined that every choice is set by God. And yet elsewhere you do affirm that God ordained everything, no matter how small.
Which is it? If both of those can be true, I can’t see how. They seem fundamentally contradictory even within a compatibilist perspective.
As a “born again” Christian, I think God has already given us a new nature. But it is a matter of “already and not yet” in terms of the results. Sanctification is a process. I think the more we (in exercising our own free will) choose to be aligned with God’s will, we will ,indeed, become more conformed to his nature over time. In this sense we are in a process that has started here and now of “hardening our hearts and wills” in the direction that conforms to Christ. But I maintain that this is a voluntary and free decision on our part.
In heaven, there will be an absence of Satan and evil influence, and yes, out of our freely chosen love for God, I think our natures in that state will be so “hardened” that we will not be tempted to sin. But I view this state as ultimately resulting from our own free choice to align with God, and then having our natures transformed, not God’s forcing a new nature onto ours.
In the eternal state to come, perhaps our two views do not differ so much.
I can give you a fuller answer, but I’m running low on time… and @Marshall just asked a very similar question above that I answered above, please let me know if that answer addresses this question and if not let me know and I can try to give a fuller answer.
In short, they are two distantly related but ultimately different topics - Yes we believe that God ordained all things (including what I had for breakfast), but in a way that is mysterious, undefined, and utterly invisible to us. Westminster even uses some very unique language: “The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care”
I compare it to the way someone like Captain Kirk may have been able to choose between two alternate timelines, but how his choice of said timelines don’t directly cause anyone within those timelines to make the choices they made.
You had somewhere earlier objected that we Calvinists don’t believe only that God had simply chosen between two timelines, but you observed that we Calvinists also believe God gave us the nature he did, and (if I understood you rightly), you (incorrectly) seemed to believe that this meant that our God-given or ordained nature - in and of itself - forced us to make every single individual choice we made.
If I believed that, then I think I would agree with you that such choices are indeed forced. If my INNATE NATURE was so controlling and forcing of my choices that it could be the sole cause of why I made a single particular choice, then I think I would agree that it wasn’t a free choice, but one literally caused, forced, necessitated, or otherwise coerced by my nature. But to that particular point, I am clarifying that while our nature does indeed preclude us from making some choices, it absolutely does not dictate each individual choice. We are not free to choose against our nature, but we are completely free to make choices of the myriad of options we can choose between that are according to our nature.
And yes, we Calvinists also, concurrently, do believe that God did ordain “whatsoever comes to pass” including my choices. But the way God does this is so mysterious, indirect, and invisible, such that it does no violence to our free choices. Something at least comparable to Captain Kirk choosing between alternate timelines in a way that did not force any individual from making any choice along that timeline. But my individual choices are not determined or dictated or coerced directly from my nature, that is what I thought important to clarify.
I don’t have time now but I can try to touch on libertarian free will, etc., later.
For now, if I may, quick question to similarly make sure I’m understanding you… Was Judas “free” to have betrayed Christ for only 25 pieces of silver? Was he free to have have held out for 40?
Again, I’d be hard pressed to find anything about this I significantly disagree with. And this is the “nature” thing we Calvinists are getting at… our natures will at that point have been transformed by God, and thus no longer any temptation (or ability?) to sin…
… But it then sounds like we agree that this new nature will not force us to make certain, particular righteous choices? We will still have free will and make free choices in heaven?
Again, you’re saying that as if you think I would disagree with it?
With all due respect, what Calvinists call “Mysterious” and the “mystery” that Luther resorted to in his text Bondage of the Will when asserting that God’s revealed will in scripture that all be saved was consistent with God’s “inscrutable” will that only the elect be saved—well I call that theology simply incoherent, not mysterious.
I agree that there are “mysterious” features of an infinite God that go beyond what our minds can comprehend, but I don’t think “playing the mystery card” in theology is valid when asserting a direct logical contradiction. If two contradictory statements are being asserted as true, it indicates to me that a premise of that systematic theology needs to be reconsidered.
But freely assenting at some point in time to have one’s inborn nature transformed by God (and believing that one also had the freedom to choose against God) is different then asserting that one’s inborn nature was fully determined and created by God from the time of the Universal Divine Decree.
One last question for clarification, then I’ve got to run and I’ll come back to this later…
Shortly, Calvinism would agree that my inborn nature (along with all other things) would have been determined by God from the time of the universal divine decree… But who would ever claim that it was literally created by God at that time? I would think that my own inborn nature would have been created somewhere around my conception.
fair enough, but for what it is worth, this is the identical argument I hear from critics when discussing the trinity, Jesus divine and human nature, etc… after all, I am not asserting a direct logical contradiction on those topics, but they claim I am.
perhaps it would be helpful if we used more formal logic… what is the specific logical contradiction (the literal A and ~A, at the same time in the same sense) that you think I am asserting?
Oh sure, you didn’t materially exist yet at the time of the Universal divine decree but how is that in any way relevant to the determined unfolding of all subsequent events? I’ll repeat here the definition of UDD from the Reformed Theology textbook: " “Reformed theology stresses the sovereignty of God in virtue of which He has sovereignly determined from all eternity whatsoever will come to pass, and works His sovereign will in His entire creation, both natural and spiritual, according to His pre-determined plan.”
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Clearly, the bolded words are specifying the unfolding of future events here, including your own birth.?
e.g., Luther asserted both: “God has a revealed will in scripture that indicates he wants to save all” and ~A “God’s inscrutable will is that he only wants to save the subset of those whose wills he has chosen to heal”. (by definition a subset cannot be “all”).
With respect to “free will” our difference arises because of a fundamental disagreement in what constitutes “free”. This is why I asked that you define for me “Compatibalist Freedom” versus “Libertarian Freedom” because it may clarify for you where the difference lies.
A little trick here: when writing the title of a book, put a ‘u’ in brackets, [ ], in front, and the same at the end except make it /u in the brackets, and it looks like this: Bondage of the Will
If you take “whatsoever comes to pass” as a summary of all the free will choices and all the other events of the timeline, then your compatibilism is built into the statement – kind of.
Not that that really makes a difference, if all things are ordained by God.
I once saw an Orthodox “brief” systematic theology (only 700 pages or so) that consisted of nothing but statements about God and salvation that were considered to be false, with explanations of why they were false.
But another Orthodox theologian asserted that the Orthodox do not have (or need) systematic theology because they don’t try to organize and then draw conclusions from scripture, they have always developed theology primarily in response to error.
Interesting way to put it.
I always thought that Calvin tried too hard to make everything tidy and logical rather than just let things be. I like Luther when he basically says “scripture says this, and this, and I don’t understand how they go together, and I can’t explain it, but that’s what it says”.
That was my one gripe about Bondage of the Will.
Though Luther was a product – no matter how much he tried to escape it – of theology that stemmed from councils, and there were councils that had condemned saying that all will be saved versus saying that God only wants to save some.
I surprised myself by finding that I agreed with (large?) chunks of what Luther had to say in B.O.T.W…The introduction was especially good. It just seemed to go off the logical rails at some point for me. Having just completed my first formal course in “Systematic Theology”, my impression was that after Augustine’s interpretation of “original sin” as “original and imputed guilt” and his formalization of the “doctrine of original sin”, subsequent theology in the West took that ball and ran with it. Generally without question. Up through Aquinas, then Luther and Calvin etc. Probably in the Eastern traditions, Augustine did not have so much of an influence such that “born with a bonded and incapacitated will” was not so much stressed? I am not very familiar with Eastern Orthodox views of the human will. Anyways in Anabaptist traditions, the move was also to break with Augustinian theology (both of original sin/guilt and of total depravity).
For me “systematic theology” was a love-hate relationship. In any case, it was good to learn more about some doctrines and theology that I ended up disagreeing with. I was curious why I hadn’t been exposed to much systematic theology earlier in my (Anabaptist/Mennonite) tradition so I googled “Anabaptist systematic theology”. Google returned a statement that Anabaptists tend to do their theology by exegeting scripture (as opposed to relying so heavily on tradition or councils). That made sense of my experience.
There are hymns devoted to teaching that very thing. I never quite figured out how singing about being guilty because Adam sinned counted as praise.
The one thing I recall is the idea of synergy, that the human will working on its own can accomplish nothing, but when working alongside God it can accomplish whatever He wishes. That applies to salvation (Orthodox is darned close to “salvation by allegiance”) and what the West calls “sanctification”.
Call me slow, but I want to make sure I understand before i develop a proper response… Im just not seeing an actual “A and ~A” in your example? Maybe because im quite familiar with the long established (and biblical concepts) of Gods secret and revealed wills.
Any actual contradiction requires the “A” and “~A” to be in the same sense of the term… is your understanding in fact, that both “wills” are meant in the very same sense? theologians that use the term certainly sont use it as such.
Quick example would be the death of Jesus. Was that God’s will? Any such unjust execution would clearly have been a violation of gods revealed will: (e.g., You shall not murder, you shall not bear false witness, etc.)… that is, His"will" in the sense of his law, standards, morals, etc.
At the same time, just to clarify, but would you truly dispute in that in a different sense, “it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer?”
The fact that theologians use different adjectives to describe these different senses of God’s will should clarify that they are talking about “wills” in two different senses, no? hence, I’m seeing no “A and ~A”
I would hold that it was humans that killed Jesus on the cross not God. And I would say that it is within God’s sovereignty for him to freely choose to give humans free agency to act against his will (to behave evilly) if they so choose. So God, in his will to reconcile with humans, allowed them to freely carry out an evil act.
But maybe before we get sidetracked on yet another tangent of atonement theories, maybe you can just answer my question?
As the one is God’s revealed will and the other his secret will, and these mean “will” in two very different senses:
God’s revealed will is what he sincerely wants (nay, demands) for all people to do: to harbor no other gods before him, to refrain from adultery, to love their neighbor, to refrain from theft, and to repent so as to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (Is this really very controversial?)
God’s secret will, i.e., what he has (indisputably) planned to allow to unfold, is that many people will indeed have alternate gods, commit adultery, hate their neighbor, commit robbery, and refuse to repent - thus failing to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. (Is this also particularly controversial?)
You are welcome to believe so, but this is not quite an argument nor a demonstration, hence short of actually demonstrating the incoherent bafflegabity to me, i am kind of forced to conclude that perhaps it is just that you aren’t seeing the inherent logic and internal consistency.
To simplify further, maybe you could explain exactly where you object to the basic logic involved:
premise 1: It is God’s will (i.e., his revealed law) that people do not commit adultery. (true, or false?)
premise 2: It is God’s will (i.e, his actual intended and realized plan for the world) that some people do sometimes commit adultery. (true, or false?)
conclusion: “will” as used in premise 1, and “will” as used in premise 2, must refer to different concepts.
