Limited Election: Are Christians Morally Obligated to Reject It?
[The following note consists of my opening statement for a panel discussion on the topic of Calvinism and the Problem of Evil at the Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers Conference. As you will see from the final paragraph, it was designed as a discussion starter, and I post it here so that anyone who would like to comment on it, or ask questions about it, will be free to do so.]
Opening Statement: Calvinism and the Problem of Evil
I want to begin with a provocative question and my own provocative answer to it. Is there a Calvinist doctrine that anyone who understands it fully and accurately would be morally obligated to reject? I believe there is, and the obligation to reject it follows directly, I believe, from the two great commandments that Jesus delivered to us. And if that assertion should come across as overly moralistic or even self-righteous, I would urge you to await my disclaimer at the end of this opening statement.
In any case, just what Calvinist doctrine do I have in mind here? During my undergraduate days, I came to identify Calvinism with a particular view of divine sovereignty and divine providence, a view that rests upon a rigorous theological determinism and rejects anything remotely like libertarian free will. That's no doubt because the first Calvinist philosopher I ever read was Gordon Clark, who held that God causally determines, either directly or indirectly through secondary causes, every event that occurs, including every human choice and therefore every human sin. Personally, such determinism strikes me as incompatible with any kind of meaningful or worthwhile creation, and I seriously doubt that God causally determines the change of state of a radium atom, a dog's leaping this way rather than that while romping in the yard, or the free choice of an independent rational agent. But a lot of smart people disagree with me about this, and it would surely be outrageous to suggest that they are all somehow morally obligated to accept my own belief in indeterminism. Besides, even if theological determinism should turn out to be true, contrary to a strong conviction of my own, that would merely suffice to render a strong case for my own understanding of universal reconciliation far easier to construct than it otherwise would be.
But despite my belief in indeterminism, I nonetheless accept wholeheartedly the Calvinist understanding of both unconditional election and irresistible grace over the long run. Indeed, St. Paul's pre-philosophical understanding of God's all-pervasive grace provides a perfectly clear picture, I believe, of how libertarian freedom, indeterminism, and even sheer chance could fit into a predestinarian scheme in which a glorious end is ultimately inescapable. For according to Paul in Romans 11, God has set things up in such a way that his mercy to all cannot lose in the end. He no more needs to control our individual choices in order to checkmate each of us in the end than the proverbial grandmaster of chess must control the choices of a novice in order to checkmate that novice. For God has a trump card he can play whenever it becomes necessary to do so. In order for his love to win over the long run, he need only permit sinners to experience the very separation from God (and the horror it entails) that they have confusedly chosen for themselves.
Accordingly, it is not the doctrine of unconditional election, nor even the idea of theological determinism, that the words of Jesus require us to reject; it is instead the doctrine of limited election (and limited atonement) that his words require us to reject. For consider again his familiar words: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37-40, KJV).
So how should we understand the concept of love in the context of these commands? In neither of them does the commanded love seem to admit of degrees, and the important point about the second command is the way in which it ties the interests of people together. If I should love my own daughter, for example, and manage to love her even as I love myself, I could never be happy knowing that God was tormenting her day and night forever and ever. That is why Paul could say: "For I could wish [or pray] that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race" (Rom 9:3---RSV). From the perspective of Paul's love for his kin, in other words, his own damnation would be no worse an evil, and no greater threat to his own happiness, than the damnation of his loved ones would be. It is also why Jesus could say: "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren [i.e., to those I love], you did it to me" (Matt 25:40---RSV). The interests of Jesus (or the King in the parable) are so tightly interwoven with those of his loved ones that any good that befalls them is a good that befalls him, and any evil that befalls them is an evil that befalls him.
All of which brings me to my main thesis. It is logically impossible, I claim, that someone should both accept a doctrine of limited election, on the one hand, and obey both of the two great commandments that Jesus delivered to us, on the other. That thesis, like any other controversial thesis, rests upon several assumptions. I assume, first of all, that God has no love at all for those whom he rejects forever and subjects to everlasting torment, no matter how many temporary goods he might confer upon them for seventy years or so of sunshine and Spring rains. And in defense of that assumption, I would argue along the following lines. If God did foreordain or causally determine that some loved one of mine, such as my own wife or son or daughter, should become unspeakably evil and eventually suffer forever in hell, then he has intentionally inflicted irreparable harm upon a loved one of mine; and if he does that, then he never had any love for this person at all. Even if, moreover, he should merely refuse to do for someone what he has done for the elect, knowing that irreparable harm would thus befall this person, then he has no love for this person at all. As Jonathan Edwards and Hermann Hoeksema rightly concluded, therefore, the non-elect could never have been anything but an object of God's eternal hatred.
I also assume that my loving God with all my heart, soul, and mind has the following three logical consequences: (1) My will conforms (or I deliberately submit it) to God's will on important issues; (2) I respect God and approve of all his actions; and (3) I am grateful to God for what he has done on my behalf.
Given these logical consequences, under what conditions, let us now ask, is it even possible that I should both love my daughter as myself and love God with all my heart, soul, and mind? One such condition is surely my unalterable belief that God has not predestined my daughter (or anyone else, for that matter) to a horrific end, that he is in fact incapable of making anyone an object of such eternal hatred even as he is incapable of lying, breaking a promise, or denying himself. For if, as a Calvinist, I should indeed believe that, for all I know, God has made my daughter an object of his eternal hatred, then either I do not love God with all my heart or I do not love my daughter even as I love myself. If I continue to approve of God and submit my own will to his, despite his hatred for my daughter, then I do not will the best for her; and if I continue to will the best for her, then (a) my will is not in conformity with God's own will, (b) I could not consistently approve of God's attitude of eternal hatred for her, and (c) neither could I be grateful to him for the harm he is doing to me. This is not merely to register a point about my own psychological makeup; the whole thing, I want to suggest, is logically or metaphysically impossible. Either I do not love my daughter as myself, or I do not love God with all my heart, or I do not believe it even possible that God might have made my daughter the object of an eternal hatred.
I do hope I am not misunderstood here. My point is not that Calvinists have violated at least one of the two great commandments any more egregiously than I have. None of us are entirely consistent in our beliefs; and having been a member of several Calvinist churches, I have known many wonderful people in these churches who are far more consistently loving in their actions than I am. In that respect, they are far better than their theology, if I have understood it correctly, even as I am far worse than mine, if I have understood it correctly. Whether I have understood either correctly is, of course, part of the ongoing debate.