Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

Two of our former Baylor graduate students, David Alexander and Daniel Johnson, have put together what looks like a very interesting anthology on the problem of evil as connected with Calvinism. Some authors are Calvinists but at least one (myself) is a critic of Calvinism. The authors are: Daniel Johnson, Greg Welty, Heath White, James Bruce, David Alexander, Paul Helm, Hugh McCann, Alexander Pruss, James Anderson, Christopher Green, Matthew Green and Anthony Bryson.

Another version of the first-sinner argument against Calvinism

1. (Premise) Any circumstances that are sufficient to determine a person with a character free of moral failings to do wrong are exculpatory for such a person.
2. (Premise) There was a first wrongdoing and it was not done in exculpatory circumstances.
3. So, either the first wrongdoer was not determined by circumstances and character, or the first wrongdoer had antecedent moral failings. (1 and 2)
4. (Premise) the first sinner did not have antecedent moral failings.
5. So, the first wrongdoer was not determined by circumstances and character. (1 and 4)

Premise (2) seems to be a part of the standard Christian picture. Nobody thinks Satan first sinned in circumstances that are exculpatory. Premise (4) follows from the fact that moral failings are evils, and evils came from sin (in the full sense of a wrongdoing the agent is responsible for—"formal" sin in Catholic terminology).

That leaves (1). But consider this line of thought. Suppose I was tortured and under torture I turned in my friends. Am I responsible or has the torture taken away my responsibility? Here is a test. I imagine whether a person free of moral failings would have been determined to do the same under torture of this intensity. If so, then the torture is of sufficient intensity to be exculpatory for me, and presumably likewise for her. (It doesn't quite follow that I am exculpated. For I could still be responsible for my sin in exculpatory circumstances, if my action is overdetermined by the exculpatory circumstances and something I am responsible for.)

A puzzle about prayer

Consider x's faithful Christian prayer that y would always avoid some sin. (Perhaps x=y, and perhaps they are distinct.) Such prayers are indeed offered, and yet it does indeed happen that sometimes y does commit that sin. This is more puzzling than cases where x prays that y be healed of some physical ailment, because sin is much worse, perhaps "incomparably worse", than any physical ailment.

Libertarians have the beginning of a story about cases like that. For God to ensure the literal fulfillment of such a prayer would require God either to take away from y the opportunity to commit the sin or to take away y's freedom, and in both cases God would be depriving y of a good. God won't give us a serpent when we ask for a fish, and he may well not give us a serpent even if we ask for a serpent. I am inclined to think that God always gives us a gift that is in some sense at least as worth getting as the one we asked for, and it may well be that it is better to get the opportunity and freedom to sin, together with the grace to resist temptation if one rejects not the grace, than to get none of these, but avoid the risk of sin.

Compatibilists have a little bit more difficulty with the puzzle, I think. I think they will say a story about how God is glorified by y's punishment and/or redemption after the sin. I think this works better if one is a universalist (I really think that in the end a Calvinist view of grace forces one into universalism), since the universalist can at least say that there is always redemption, and hence while x doesn't get exactly what x prayed for, y's redemption, which is what x presumably really wanted most of all, is still assured by other means. But it is tougher if one is not a universalist.

A dialogue on Calvinism

Ari: Consider this horrific theology: God forces Sally to sin, in a way that takes away her responsibility, and then he intentionally causes eternal torment to her.

Cal: I thought you were smarter than that. That isn't Calvinist theology! Calvinism holds that God intentionally causes people to sin in a way that retains their responsibility, and then punishes some of them.

Ari: I didn't say it was a Calvinist theology. You agree that this is a horrific theology, I take it?

Cal: Yes, of course.

Ari: Why?

Cal: Because God is punishing an innocent.

Ari: I said nothing about punishment. I said God intentionally caused eternal torment. I didn't say that the torment was a punishment.

Cal: How does that make it not be horrific?

Ari: I agree it's horrific. I just want to get clear on why. It's horrific because eternal torment is intentionally imposed on an innocent, right?

Cal: Right.

Ari: And why is that horrific?

Cal: Huh?!

Ari: It's obvious, isn't it? It's horrific because eternal torment is an extremely great harm, and it is being imposed on an innocent.

Cal: Yes. But I said: that theology isn't mine.

Ari: And I didn't say it was. But now, you agree that eternal torment is deserved for sin or at least some sin.

Cal: For all sin.

Ari: Very good. And punishment should be proportionate to the crime?

Cal: Yes. And sin is a rebellion against God. Every sin is horrendous.

Ari: Right. And do you agree with Socrates that it is better to suffer wrongdoing than to act wrongly?

Cal: There is eternal punishment, after all.

Ari: Would it be true even if there were no hell? Socrates thinks it is in itself better to suffer wrongdoing than to act wrongly.

Cal: I guess he's right.

Ari: And the worse the wrongdoing, the worse it is to for the wrongdoer?

Cal: Yes.

Ari: And so, if sin is an extremely great evil, it is an extremely great harm to the wrongdoer, right?

Cal: That sounds right.

Ari: But now let's go back to your theology. Your theology is that God intentionally causes some innocent people to sin...

Cal: ... in a way that retains their responsibility.

Ari: Exactly. It wouldn't be sin in the full sense without the responsibility. But we also agreed that it is an extremely great harm to the sinner to sin.

Cal: I guess so.

Ari: And we agreed that the horrific theology is horrific precisely because it has God intentionally imposing an extremely great harm on an innocent person. Yet according to your theology God intentionally imposes an extremely great harm on an innocent person—the harm of sinning. Moreover, this harm appears to be of the same order of magnitude as eternal torment, because the sin deserves eternal torment and punishment needs to match the crime.

Cal: I'll need to think about this. But one quick thought comes into my mind: God causes people to sin in order to glorify himself through redeeming some and punishing others.

Ari: But my horrific theology wouldn't be a good theology if we added that God somehow makes use of the eternal torment of the innocent person to glorify himself. Maybe the innocent person is so good that she sings praises to God for eternity, and such singing of praise, despite eternal torment, has extremely high value. Now maybe you don't buy that it has such great value. But I submit that even if it did, intentionally imposing eternal torment on an innocent would not be justified. And for the same reason, intentionally imposing sin on an innocent is not justified.

Sin, compatibilism and Calvinism

Consider the following plausible principle:

1. If x's character are such that they causally necessitate x's doing wrong in circumstances C, then (a) the character is in some way vicious or (b) x is not culpable for doing wrong in C (or both).

It may be that sometimes a person is causally necessitated by non-vicious character to do wrong, for instance, because her non-vicious character leaves her ignorant of the wrongness of the action. But according to (1), these are going to be precisely the cases where she is not culpable for her actions. Principle (1) should be acceptable to compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. For instance, Hume accepts (1), given that he holds that actions are only culpable insofar as they reveal the vicious character from which they flow. Incompatibilists, on the other hand, will either deny that one could be necessitated to culpably do wrong, or will allow that one can be necessitated to culpably do wrong, but only when earlier free actions have caused one to have a vicious character.

Now, Calvinists are typically compatibilists. There are, however, two relevant senses of determinism: determinism by divine causality (d-determinism) and determinism by finite causes (f-determinism). Likewise, there are two senses of compatibilism: d-compatibilism asserts the compatibility between d-determinism and freedom, while f-compatibilism asserts the compatibility between f-determinism and freedom. The kind of Calvinist response to the problem of sin that I sketched in the comments to my preceding post require f-determinism and f-compatibilism.

But now consider this argument:

2. (Premise) Antecedently to sin, the first sinner had character that were in no way vicious.
3. (Premise) The first sinner was culpable for the first sin.
4. (Premise) If f-determinism holds, the first sinner was necessitated to sin by his character in the circumstances in which he sinned.
5. If f-determinism holds, the first sinner, antecedently to sin, had a character that was in some way vicious or he was not culpable for the first sin. (1 and 4)
6. F-determinism does not hold. (2, 3 and 5)

Here, (2) is a consequence of the goodness of creation, and (3) is the standard Christian view. And (4) seems to be just spelling out f-determinism, together with the fact that agents act in the light of character. The first sinner, of course, is going to be Satan, but I suppose some less orthodox Calvinist might prefer to make it be Adam or Eve (but would the less orthodox Calvinist still be a determinist?). (I suppose one might dispute (3) and hold that the first sinner committed more than one sin: the first he was not culpable for, and this caused him to have a bad character, out of which bad character he culpably sinned. This does not appear to me to be a very plausible view.)

The present argument together with the previous provides a dilemma for the Calvinist. Given Calvinism, either f-determinism or mere d-determinism holds. If f-determinism holds, the present argument leads to absurdity. If d-determinism holds, however, then it does not appear easy to get out of the objection that God intendingly causes people to sin (x intendingly causes A iff A fulfills x's intention that A occur; to cause intendingly is more than to intend and cause[note 1] and may be more than to cause intentionally[note 2]).

Calvinism and the problem of sin

According to St Paul, we do not do evil that good might come of it. A plausible version of this principle is:

1. It is wrong to intend to produce an intrinsic evil, either as an end in itself or as a means (causal or constitutive) to an end.

Now, sin is an intrinsic evil. If (1) applies to God as well as to us, then a perfectly righteous God cannot intend anyone to sin. As far as (1) goes, it might be acceptable to permit someone to sin in order to bring a good out of it, but to cause someone to sin, even in order to bring a good out of it, is wrong. We might then formulate one of the distinctive views of Calvinism as that God intends sin in order to be glorified either by redeeming or by punishing the sinner. But then God violates (1).

Presumably, a standard Calvinist response will be that (1) applies to us but not to God. However, our ethics is supposed to be an ethics of love, and God, whether necessarily or by his contingent decision, always acts in love as well. (Some Calvinists think God doesn't love the reprobate. But the argument still applies insofar as on Calvinist views it seems that God intends the elect—whom he loves—to sin, in order that he be able to redeem them.) And principle (1) seems to be at such a high level of generality that if it follows from the duty to love in our case, it is likely to follow from that duty in the case of God, as well.

I think the Calvinist should deny that God intends sin. Instead, the Calvinist should give some sort of a Double Effect story on which God causes something that entails the existence of sin, but which is distinct from the sin and good, and to which the sin is not a means. Maybe instead of willing Sally to punch George, which was evil, God can intend Sally to swing her fist forward, which is not in itself an evil, but which, along with the other things God has willed, entails that Sally is punched by George. Then one ends up denying that God intends people to sin for the sake of his glory, instead asserting that for the sake of his glory he permits them to sin, while he (God) wills something that entails their sinning. Whether it is possible for a Calvinist to walk this fine line is not clear.

Reformed Christianity and sufficient grace

Scripture promises that:

1. For any temptation, the faithful Christian will receive a grace sufficient to withstand that temptation.

The phrase "the faithful Christian" here has a meaning that differs depending on the interpretation of various texts, but suggests a Christian in God's good graces, as it were. In a Catholic setting, we can precisify this as: "a Christian in a state of grace." In a Reformed setting, we can take the phrase as coextensive with "one of the Elect after gaining faith". The following also seems true:

2. Some faithful Christians succumb to temptation.

There are some small groups of Christians that deny (2). I take the denial of (2) to be quite implausible, unless one just defines a "faithful Christian" as one who withstands temptation, in which case (1) is hard to make non-trivial sense of, or unless one has a very narrow notion of sin (e.g., transgression of one of the Ten Commandments, understood in a narrowly literal way).

But (1) and (2) are in apparent conflict. For it follows from (1) and (2) that:

3. Some faithful Christians fall to a temptation that they have received a grace sufficient to withstand.

This immediately implies that "a grace sufficient to do A" is not a grace the presence of which suffices to ensure that one does A. But now it is really puzzling what "sufficient" could mean in this context.

Incompatibilist Christians, such as many Catholics, have a story to tell here. They can say that what (1) says is that the faithful Christian receives a grace sufficient to make withstanding the temptation be within one's power or maybe even well within one's power (this could happen by supernaturally augmenting that power, or by decreasing the force of the temptation, or both). In other words, these Christians say that "sufficient" in "sufficient grace" does not mean "sufficient for withstanding" but "sufficient for the (reasonable?) possibility of withstanding". This is a perfectly fine use of the word "sufficient". It seems imaginable that the doctor gives me medication that is "sufficient" to remove a headache, but the effects of the medication are negated by the ingestion of alcohol. What we mean by saying that the medication is sufficient to remove a headache is that it puts the removal of the headache within one's power, if only one follows the doctor's instructions.

But the puzzle is greater for Christians of a more Reformed bent, who normally see a grace sufficient for A as in fact a grace that necessitates A. This is, after all, the standard Reformed view of salvific grace: anybody who has received the grace sufficient for salvation is one of the Elect, and because of the receipt of the grace is necessarily going to be saved.

The question now is whether a Reformed Christian can give a different story about sanctifying grace, so that a person can receive a grace sufficient to withstand temptation and yet fall to that temptation. If not, then Reformed Christianity is not tenable in the light of (1) and (2).

It is possible for a Reformed Christian to have the following moderate view: While salvation is a matter of divinely determined predestination, and faith is necessitated by grace, nonetheless faithful Christians have libertarian freedom in respect of things that do not affect whether they are saved. In particular, then, if the Reformed Christian does not think sins rule out salvation, she may then given the same account of how (1) and (2) can be both be true as more generally incompatibilist Christians do. She can say that we get a grace sufficient to make it possible for us to overcome temptation.

But what about a Reformed Christian who denies that we have any libertarian freedom, e.g., because of a strong view of divine sovereignty or because she is convinced by Jonathan Edwards' and Hume's arguments against libertarianism[note 1]? Then the problem presented by (1) and (2) may be insoluble. In what sense has God given George the grace to withstand the temptation to get drunk if God in his sovereignty has placed George in a position where George cannot but get drunk?

Perhaps, though, the determinist Reformed Christian can give the following story. Many compatibilists think that if we understand "capable" appropriately, we can still say that if George freely does A, he was capable of refraining from doing A. The sense of "capable" here would be a lack of physical or mental compulsion to do A, say (the details are hard to work out), a lack that is compatible with the claim that the agent's character determines the agent to do A. Maybe, then, the compatibilist can give the familiar answer above: God gives the faithful Christian a grace sufficient to make the Christian in this sense capable of withstanding the temptation. Except that now "capable" must be understood in the compatibilist sense. In other words, grace removes the physical and mental compulsion to fall prey to the temptation, but does not necessarily repair one's character in such a way that one would withstand the temptation.

But this answer, I think, fails. First of all, if we include threats of suffering and pain under the head of "physical compulsion", and a habitual attraction to something under the head of "mental compulsion", then on this broader reading of physical and mental compulsion, God's grace does not always remove the compulsion. On the contrary, in the cases of martyrs or people overcoming addictions, the threat of suffering or the habitual attraction remain present, and grace enables one to overcome the threat or habit.

So for the answer to have any hope of working, we must understand "compulsion" fairly narrowly. But then we have the following problem. If I am compelled, in that narrow sense, to do something, then I am not responsible for that action. If I am physically compelled in a narrow sense to throw a rock, e.g., by electrodes implanted in my brain, then I am not sinning by throwing the rock. But temptation in this context is, by definition, temptation to sin. So on this view, the grace to withstand temptation is what actually makes the sin possible, since without the grace one would be compelled, in the narrow sense, to do the bad thing, and while the action would be bad, it would not be a sin (technically speaking, it might be a material but not a formal sin). The view that the grace of withstanding temptation that faithful Christians are promised is what makes sin possible seems deeply unsatisfactory. Moreover, on such a view the grace is quite pointless, since without the grace one would be guaranteed not to sin, as one would be acting under compulsion.

Maybe there is some further story the determinist Reformed Christian can give that would reconcile (1) and (2). But at least absent such a story, we have good reason not to be determinist Reformed Christians.