Outline.
1. Compatibilism: The Question.
2. Excursus: Compatibilism — A Few Literary Examples.
4. A Case Study: The Author/Story Analogy.
6. Primary and Secondary Causes.
7. The Necessity of Human Effort.
1. Compatibilism: The Question. Return to Outline.
Bart D. Ehrman:
…if people do bad things because God ordains them to do them, why are they held responsible? If Adam and Eve were foreordained to eat the fruit, why were they punished for it? If Judas betrayed Jesus and Pilate crucified him because that was God’s will, how can they be held accountable? …God is typically portrayed as the all-powerful Sovereign of this world who foreknows all things, yet human beings are portrayed as responsible for their actions.
(Bart Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer, [New York: HarperOne, 2008], p. 120.)
2. Excursus: Compatibilism — A Few Literary Examples. Return to Outline.
C. S. Lewis:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
(C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, [New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1955], p. 221.)
C. S. Lewis:
The thing was neither more nor less dreadful than it had been before. The only difference was that he knew—almost as a historical proposition—that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel—might curse or adore—sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unalterable as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject.
(C. S. Lewis, Perelandra: A Novel, [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944], pp. 155-156.)
J. R. R. Tolkien:
…it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.
…Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’
(J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien, [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977], p. 5.)
Stephen R. Lawhead:
He saw his own world as one minute fleck against the darkness, and knew that his life, and the lives of every man who had ever lived, was but a single faltering step in the Great Dance of Heaven.
The Dance flowed and ebbed according to the will of the Maker, and all moved with him as he moved. There was not a solitary figure in the Dance that was not in his plan—from the seemingly random shuttling of atoms colliding with one another through the limitless reaches of empty night, to the aimless scrabblings of an insect in the dust, to the directionless meandering of a river of molten iron on a world no human eye would ever see—all was embraced, upheld, encompassed by the Great Dance.
(Stephen R. Lawhead, Dream Thief, [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993], p. 355.)
3. Compatibilism, Definition. Return to Outline.
John Calvin:
…man, though acted upon by God, at the same time also acts.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: Volume First, trans. Henry Beveridge, [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1863], 1.18.2, p. 201.)
Thomas Aquinas:
Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.
(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I. QQ. LXXV.—CII., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, LTD., 1922], Pt. I, Q. 83, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3, p. 149.)
Note: See further: Concurrence (Concursus) — Primary and Secondary Causes.
Ronald K. Rittgers:
…the God of the Bible who both suffers with humanity—supremely on the cross—and yet is in some sense also sovereign over suffering. Both beliefs were (and are) essential to the traditional Christian assertion that suffering ultimately has some meaning and that the triune God is able to provide deliverance from it.
(Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012], p. 261.) Preview.
D. A. Carson:
The Bible as a whole, and sometimes in specific texts, presupposes or teaches that both of the following propositions are true:
God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility.
Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.
(D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 179.) Preview.
Cf. D. A. Carson:
I shall begin by articulating two truths, both of which are demonstrably taught or exemplified again and again in the Bible:
God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility.
Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.
My argument is that both propositions are taught and exemplified in the Bible. Part of our problem is believing that both are true. We tend to use one to diminish the other; we tend to emphasize one at the expense of the other. But responsible reading of the Scripture prohibits such reductionism.
(D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 148.) Preview.
Timothy Keller:
What do we mean, first, when we say that God is sovereign over history and therefore over suffering? The doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Bible has sometimes been called compatibilism. The Bible teaches that God is completely in control of what happens in history and yet he exercises that control in such a way that human beings are responsible for their freely chosen actions and the result of those actions. Human freedom and God’s direction of historical events are therefore completely compatible. To put it practically and vividly—if a man robs a bank, that moral evil is fully his responsibility, though it also is part of God’s plan.
It is crude but effective to think of this in percentages. We think that either God has planned something or that a human being has freely chose to do it—but both cannot be true at once. Perhaps we grant that the event is due 50 percent to God’s activity and 50 percent to human agency. Or maybe it is 80-20, or 20-80. But the Bible depicts history as 100 percent under God’s purposeful direction, and yet filled with human beings who are 100 percent responsible for their behavior—at once.
This way of thinking is counterintuitive to both ancient and modern ways of thinking. The Greek notion of “fate” or the Islamic notion of “kismet” are quite different from the Christian doctrine of God’s sovereignty. The Greek myth of Oedipus tells of the main character who, the oracle predicts, is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Though Oedipus and all around him do all they can to avoid this fate, all of their schemes to avoid this destiny only end up hastening it. The destined end is reached despite everyone’s choices. The Christian concept of God’s sovereignty is quite different. God’s plan works through our choices, not around or despite them. Our choices have consequences, and we are never forced by God to do anything—we always do what we most want to do. God works out his will perfectly through our willing actions.
(Timothy Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, [New York: Riverhead Books, 2015], p. 140.) Preview.
Bruce A. Ware:
God’s determination of what people do is compatible with their carrying out those those determined actions with genuine human freedom and responsibility. …God determines what someone does, and yet they are held responsible for their actions.
(Bruce A. Ware, “The Compatibility of Determinism and Human Freedom;” In: Whomever He Wills: A Surprising Display of Sovereign Mercy, eds. Matthew Barrett, Thomas J. Nettles, [Cape Coral: Founders, 2012], pp. 213, 221. Cf. Shawn D. Wright, 40 Questions About Calvinism, [Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2019], p. 86.) Preview.
Zachary Broom:
As Westerners, this concept seems like a contradiction to us, as we tend to think of things in terms of either/or. However, the Bible clearly teaches that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not a contradiction, but a paradox. God sovereignly determines the course of the future, not in spite of our choices, but through them.
(Zachary Broom, Without God: Science, Belief, Morality and the Meaning of Life, [Zachary Broom, 2019], Chapter Ten, p. 226.) [Kindle edition]
D. A. Carson:
According to Jesus, if the birds are fed it is because the Father feeds them (Matt. 6:26); if wild flowers grow, it is because God clothes the grass (6:30). Thus God stands behind the so-called natural processes. That is why biblical writers prefer to speak of the Lord sending the rain, rather than to say, simply, “It’s raining”—and this despite the fact that they were perfectly aware of the water cycle. The prophets understood the sweep of God’s sway: “I know, O LORD, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). “The LORD does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths” (Ps. 135:6). The passage (Eph. 1:3-14) is as strong as any: God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11). In some mysterious way, and without being tainted with evil himself, God stands behind unintentional manslaughter (Exod. 21:13), family misfortune (Ruth 1:13), national disaster (Isa. 45:6-7), personal grief (Lam. 3:32-33, 37-38), even sin (2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Kings 22:21ff.). In none of these cases, however, is human responsibility ever diminished. Thus although it is God in his wrath who incites David to take the prohibited census (2 Sam. 24:1), David is nevertheless held accountable for his actions.
The second of my two statements is no less strongly supported in Scripture. There are countless passages where human beings are commanded to obey, choose, believe, and are held accountable if they fail to do so. God himself offers moving pleas to incite us to repentance, because he finds no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Isa. 30:18; 65:2; Lam. 3:31-36; Ezek. 18:30-32; 33:11). In his day, Joshua can challenge Israel in these words: “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. . . . But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. . . . But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Josh. 24:14-15). The commanding invitation of the gospel itself assumes profound responsibility: “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. . . . As the Scripture says, ‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame’” (Rom. 10:9, 11). Of course, none of this jeopardizes God’s sovereignty: only a few verses earlier we find the apostle quoting Scripture (Exod. 33:19) to prove that “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Rom. 9:18).
Hundreds of passages could be explored to demonstrate that the Bible assumes both that God is sovereign and that people are responsible for their actions. As hard as it is for many people in the Western world to come to terms with both truths at the same time, it takes a great deal of interpretative ingenuity to argue that the Bible does not support them.
(D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], pp. 149-150.) Preview.
James White:
After the death of Jacob, Joseph’s brothers were fearful of reprisals due to their treatment of Joseph years before. As they cowered before their powerful sibling, Joseph wept, realizing that his brothers still did not understand how he had forgiven them, nor how God had worked in the circumstances. So he says to them,
“Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.” So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. (Genesis 50:19-21)
These are the words of one who has come to see the sovereign plan of God in his own life. Joseph well knew the motivations of his brothers when they sold him into slavery. But, in the very same event he saw the over-riding hand of God, guiding, directing, and ultimately meaning in the same action to bring about good. One might ask, “But, if God decreed that this event would take place, how can He still hold Joseph’s brothers personally accountable for their actions?” Even if we did not have an answer to this question, it would not matter: God makes it clear that He does hold men accountable. But it is clear that they are judged on the basis of the intention of their hearts. We dare not think that Joseph’s brothers were forced against the desires of their hearts to commit the evil of selling their brother into slavery. They desired to do this: indeed, if God had not intervened it is sure they would have killed him outright, so great was their hatred toward their brother. But God preserved Joseph’s life, and sent him to Egypt to preserve life and accomplish His will.
(James R. White, The Potter’s Freedom: A Defense of the Reformation and a Rebuttal of Norman Geisler’s Chosen But Free, [ Amityville: Calvary Press, 2000], pp. 47-48.)
John Calvin:
...we allow that man has choice and that it is self-determined, so that if he does anything evil, it should be imputed to him and to his own voluntary choosing. We do away with coercion and force, because this contradicts the nature of the will and cannot coexist with it. We deny that choice is free, because through man’s innate wickedness it is of necessity driven to what is evil and cannot seek anything but evil. And from this it is possible to deduce what a great difference there is between necessity and coercion. For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity will in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity. But it makes a great difference whether the bondage is voluntary or coerced. We locate the necessity to sin precisely in corruption of the will, from which follows that it is self-determined.
(John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A Defence of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice Against Pighius, trans. G. I. Davies, [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996], pp. 69-70.) Preview.
A. W. Pink:
It is only as we see the real nature of freedom and mark that the will is subject to the motives brought to bear upon it, that we are able to discern there is no conflict between two statements of Holy Writ which concern our blessed Lord. In Matt. 4:1 we read, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil”; but in Mark 1:12,13 we are told, “And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan”. It is utterly impossible to harmonize these two statements by the Arminian conception of the will. But really there is no difficulty. That Christ was “driven”, implies it was by a forcible motive or powerful impulse, such as was not to be resisted or refused; that he was “led” denotes his freedom in going. Putting the two together we learn, that he was driven, with a voluntary condescension thereto. So, there is the liberty of man’s will and the victorious efficacy of God’s grace united together: a sinner may be “drawn” and yet “come” to Christ—the “drawing” presenting to him the irresistible motive, the “coming” signifying the response of his will—as Christ was “driven” and “led” by the Spirit into the wilderness.
(Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, [Lafayette: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2008], Ch. 7, §. 1, p. 164.) Preview.
Acts 4:27-28:
For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.
(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)
Acts 2:22-23:
“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.
(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)
Cf. D. A. Carson:
Christians who may deny compatibilism on front after front become compatibilists (knowing or otherwise) when they think about the cross. There is no alternative, except to deny the faith. And if we are prepared to be compatibilists when we think about the cross—that is, to accept both of the propositions I set out at the head of this chapter as true, as they are applied to the cross—it is only a very small step to understanding that compatibilism is taught or presupposed everywhere in the Bible.
(D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 188.) Preview.
D. A. Carson:
So I am driven to see not only that compatibilism is itself taught in the Bible, but that it is tied to the very nature of God; and on the other hand, I am driven to see that my ignorance about many aspects of God’s nature is precisely that same ignorance that instructs me not to follow the whims of many contemporary philosophers and deny that compatibilism is possible.
The mystery of providence is in the first instance not located in debates about decrees, free will, the place of Satan, and the like. It is located in the doctrine of God.
(D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], p. 193.) Preview.
Cf. Psalm 50:21:
“These things you have done and I kept silence; You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.
(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)
Cf. Job 11:7-8:
“Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? “They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know?
(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)
Cf. Isaiah 55:8-9:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)
John Calvin:
Let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear Scriptural proofs because it exceeds their mental capacity, and find fault that things are put forth publicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach. For our wisdom ought to be nothing else than to embrace with humble teachableness, and at least without finding fault, whatever is taught in Sacred Scripture. Those who insolently scoff, even though it is clear enough that they are prating against God, are not worthy of a longer refutation.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.18.4; trans. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes (Vol. XX: Books I.i to III.xix), The Library of Christian Classics: Volume XX, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960], p. 237.)
4. A Case Study: The Author/Story Analogy. Return to Outline.
Wayne Grudem:
The analogy of an author writing a play may help us to grasp how both aspects can be true. In the Shakespearean play Macbeth the character Macbeth murders King Duncan. Now (if we assume for a moment that this is a fictional account), the question may be asked, “Who killed King Duncan?” On one level, the correct answer is “Macbeth.” Within the context of the play he carried out the murder and is rightly to blame for it. But on another level, a correct answer to the question, “Who killed King Duncan?” would be “William Shakespeare”: he wrote the play, he created all the characters in it, and he wrote the part where Macbeth killed King Duncan.
It would not be correct to say that because Macbeth killed King Duncan, William Shakespeare did not kill him. Nor would it be correct to say that because William Shakespeare killed King Duncan, Macbeth did not kill him. Both are true. On the level of the characters in the play Macbeth fully (100 percent) caused King Duncan’s death, but on the level of the creator of the play, William Shakespeare fully (100 percent) caused King Duncan’s death. In similar fashion, we can understand that God fully causes things in one way (as Creator), and we fully cause things in another way (as creatures).
Of course, someone may object that the analogy does not really solve the problem because characters in a play are not real persons; they are only characters with no freedom of their own, no ability to make genuine choices, and so forth. But in response we may point out that God is infinitely greater and wiser than we are. While we as finite creatures can only create fictional characters in a play, not real persons, God, our infinite Creator, has made an actual world and in it has created us as real persons who make willing choices. To say that God could not make a world in which he causes us to make willing choices (as some would argue today; see discussion below), is simply to limit the power of God. It seems also to deny a large number of passages of Scripture.[fn. 4: I. Howard Marshall, “Predestination in the New Testament” in Grace Unlimited by Clark H. Pinnock, pp. 132–33, 139, objects to the analogy of an author and a play because the actors “are bound by the characters assigned to them and the lines that they have learned” so that even if the dramatist “makes [the characters] say ‘I love my creator’ in his drama, this is not mutual love in the real sense.” But Marshall limits his analysis to what is possible with human beings acting on a human level. He does not give consideration to the possibility (in fact, the reality!) that God is able to do far more than human beings are able to do, and that he can wonderfully create genuine human beings rather than mere characters in a play. A better approach to the analogy of an author and a play would be if Marshall would apply to this question a very helpful statement that he made in another part of the essay: “The basic difficulty is that of attempting to explain the nature of the relationship between an infinite God and finite creatures. Our temptation is to think of divine causation in much the same way as human causation, and this produces difficulties as soon as we try to relate divine causation and human freedom. It is beyond our ability to explain how God can cause us to do certain things (or to cause the universe to come into being and to behave as it does)” (pp. 137–38). I can agree fully with everything in Marshall’s statement at that point, and find that to be a very helpful way of approaching this problem.]
(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, [Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1994], pp. 321-323.)
5. The Objection. Return to Outline.
Objection.
If Humanity does not have the ability to “not commit sin” (Augustine: non posse non peccare) then how can they be held responsible for their actions?
Reply.
John Calvin:
Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God’s grace. So Jeremiah prayed to the Lord to be “converted” if it were his will to “convert him” [Jer. 31:18, cf. Vg.]. Hence the prophet in the same chapter, describing the spiritual redemption of the believing folk, speaks of them as “redeemed from the hand of one stronger than they” [v. 11 p.]. By this he surely means the tight fetters with which the sinner is bound so long as, forsaken by the Lord, he lives under the devil’s yoke. Nonetheless the will remains, with the most eager inclination disposed and hastening to sin. For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will, but of soundness of will. Not inappropriately Bernard teaches that to will is in us all: but to will good is gain; to will evil, loss. Therefore simply to will is of man; to will ill, of a corrupt nature; to will well, of grace.[fn. 9: Bernard, Concerning Grace and Free Will vi. 16 (MPL 182. 1040; tr. W. W. Williams, p. 32).]
Now, when I say that the will bereft of freedom is of necessity either drawn or led into evil, it is a wonder if this seems a hard saying to anyone, since it has nothing incongruous or alien to the usage of holy men. But it offends those who know not how to distinguish between necessity and compulsion.[fn. 10: Luther had made this distinction in his dispute with Erasmus: “By necessity I do not mean compulsion, but the necessity of immutability”; he explains that an evil man does evil spontaneously but that he cannot of himself leave off doing evil. De servo arbitrio (Werke WA XVIII. 634; tr. H. Cole, The Bondage of the Will, p. 72). De Castro virtually identifies the two. Adversus omnes haereses IX (1543, fo. 123 D).] Suppose someone asks them: Is not God of necessity good? Is not the devil of necessity evil? What will they reply? God’s goodness is so connected with his divinity that it is no more necessary for him to be God than for him to be good. But the devil by his fall was so cut off from participation in good that he can do nothing but evil. But suppose some blasphemer sneers that God deserves little praise for His own goodness, constrained as He is to preserve it.[fn. 11: In Defensio doctrinae de servitute humani arbitrii contra A. Pighium (1543), Calvin assails Pighius for this opinion (CR VI. 333 f.). Albert Pighius was a Louvain scholar who served Adrian VI and succeeding popes in Rome and who published various anti-Reformation books. Calvin’s treatise is a reply to his De libero hominis arbitrio et divina gratia (Cologne, 1542). Cf. also Augustine, On Nature and Grace xlvi. 54 (MPL 44. 273; tr. NPNF V. 139).] Will this not be a ready answer to him: not from violent impulsion, but from His boundless goodness comes God’s inability to do evil? Therefore, if the fact that he must do good does not hinder God’s free will in doing good; if the devil, who can do only evil, yet sins with his will—who shall say that man therefore sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning? Augustine everywhere speaks of this necessity; and even though Caelestius caviled against him invidiously, he did not hesitate to affirm it in these words: “Through freedom man came to be in sin, but the corruption which followed as punishment turned freedom into necessity.”[fn. 12: Augustine, On Man’s Perfection in Righteousness iv. 9 (MPL 44. 295; tr. NPNF V. 161); On Nature and Grace lxvi. 79, quoting Ps. 25:17 (Vg. Ps. 24:17): “de miserationibus meis” (MPL 44. 286; tr. NPNF V. 149).] And whenever he makes mention of the matter, he does not hesitate to speak in this manner of the necessary bondage of sin.
The chief point of this distinction, then, must be that man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart, not by forced compulsion; by the prompting of his own lust, not by compulsion from without. Yet so depraved is his nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil. But if this is true, then it is clearly expressed that man is surely subject to the necessity of sinning.[fn. 13: This distinction is similarly made, but with different terminology, in Reinhold Niebuhr’s view that man sins “inevitably” but “responsibly.” The Nature and Destiny of Man, first series, pp. 251-264.]
Bernard, agreeing with Augustine, so writes: “Among all living beings man alone is free; and yet because sin has intervened he also undergoes a kind of violence, but of will, not of nature, so that not even thus is he deprived of his innate freedom. For what is voluntary is also free.” And a little later: “In some base and strange way the will itself, changed for the worse by sin, makes a necessity for itself. Hence, neither does necessity, although it is of the will, avail to excuse the will, nor does the will, although it is led astray, avail to exclude necessity. For this necessity is as it were voluntary.” Afterward he says that we are oppressed by no other yoke than that of a kind of voluntary servitude. Therefore we are miserable as to servitude and inexcusable as to will because the will, when it was free, made itself the slave of sin. Yet he concludes: “Thus the soul, in some strange and evil way, under a certain voluntary and wrongly free necessity is at the same time enslaved and free: enslaved because of necessity; free because of will. And what is at once stranger and more deplorable, it is guilty because it is free, and enslaved because it is guilty, and as a consequence enslaved because it is free.”[fn. 14: Bernard, Sermons on the Song of Songs lxxxi. 7, 9 (MPL 183. 1174 f.; tr. S. J. Eales, Life and Works of St. Bernard IV. 498 f.); Lombard, Sentences II. xxv. 5, 9 (MPL 192. 707).] Surely my readers will recognize that I am bringing forth nothing new, for it is something that Augustine taught of old with the agreement of all the godly, and it was still retained almost a thousand years later in monastic cloisters. But Lombard, since he did not know how to distinguish necessity from compulsion, gave occasion for a pernicious error.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.5; trans. The Library of Christian Classics: Volume XX: Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion: In Two Volumes (Vol. XX: Books I.i to III.xix), ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960], pp. 294-296.)
Note: See further: The “Will”; also Free Will (Libertarian?); and Does God Drag Unwilling Sinners to Heaven?
Note: See further: Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, [Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1994], pp. 344-347.
6. Primary and Secondary Causes. Return to Outline.
John Piper:
Arminians sometimes disparage Reformed appeals to “secondary causes” between God’s sovereign will and the immediate effecting of a sinful act. But the Reformed introduce this idea of intermediate causes, different from God’s ultimate causing, not because of a theological necessity but because so many Scripture passages demand it. For example, God commissions an “evil spirit” between Abimelech and the men of Shechem to bring about his will (Judg. 9:22–24); Satan leads Judas to do (Luke 22:3) what Acts 2:23 says God brings about; Paul says that Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4), but also says that God sends a blinding spirit of stupor (Rom. 11:8–10); Satan stirs up David to take a census (1 Chron. 21:1), which proves to be sin (2 Sam. 24:10), and yet it is written that God is in some sense the cause behind Satan (2 Sam. 24:1); and Satan gets permission from God to torment Job (Job 1:12; 2:6), but when Satan takes Job’s family and makes him sick, Job says, “The Lord has taken” (Job 1:21), and, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10)—to which the writer responds: “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (1:22; cf. 2:10).
(John Piper, Does God Desire all to be Saved? [Wheaton: Crossway, 2013], pp. 42-43.) Preview.
Note: See further: Concurrence (Concursus) — Primary and Secondary Causes.
7. The Necessity of Human Effort. Return to Outline.
Henry Scougal:
It is true, religion in the souls of men is the immediate work of God; and all our natural endeavors can neither produce it alone, nor merit those supernatural aids by which it must be wrought: the Holy Ghost must come upon us, and the power of the Highest must overshadow us, before that holy thing can be begotten, and Christ be formed in us. But yet we must not expect that this whole work should be done without any concurring endeavors of our own: we must not lie loitering in the ditch, and wait till Omnipotence pull us from thence. No, no: we must bestir ourselves, and actuate those powers which we have already received: we must put forth ourselves to our utmost capacities, and then we may hope that our labor shall not be in vain in the Lord. All the art and industry of man cannot form the smallest herb, or make a stalk of corn to grow in the field: it is the energy of nature, and the influences of heaven, which produce this effect; it is God who causes the grass to grow, and herb for the service of man: and yet nobody will say, that the labors of the husbandman are useless or unnecessary.
(Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, [Boston: Nichols and Noyes, 1868], p. 75.) See also: ccel.org.
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria
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