Calvinism and Philosophy

I’ve been hanging on the sidelines of this discussion for a number of reasons.  In some ways, I don’t really have a dog in this fight.  Or—to run with a really bad metaphor—my dog has limited time and energy and I pick his battles carefully, and don’t usually pick this one.  However, given that I’m one of the few (only?) “Calvinists” (I prefer “Augustinian”) who teaches philosophy at John Calvin’s college, I felt backed into a corner just a bit and so offer a timid rejoinder.   (Plus, I can’t sleep, and I’m hoping this will have soporific effects.  If this doesn’t work, I’m going to start reading Francis Turretin…)
    I also weigh in here with some trepidation because, while John Calvin’s name is across the entrance of my institutional home, in other functional ways this is the college of Saints Al and Nick, and I part ways with them on these points. 

1. I must say that I take umbrage at the tone or implied assumption in Keith’s first post, or perhaps more with the assumptions at work in the Zimmeran quote there.  [I don’t know the paper from which this is taken, and perhaps the context is important.]  But the tone/assumption seems to be something like this: (a) theologians might be prone to falling for Calvinism, but that’s because they’re not really as smart as philosophers; and (b) any philosopher who is smart and compassionate couldn’t possibly entertain Calvinism.  Both of these assumptions are, I hope, quite obviously problematic.  (And permit me to just note that I have no truck with the “revival” of Calvinism in popular evangelicalism, which I think is much more about power, patriarchy, and conservative politics.)

2. Zimmerman also suggests that any Christian who hopes to “hew closely to orthodoxy” within Catholicism or Anglicanism could not entertain “Calvinist” conceptions of freedom and election.  This is puzzling to me for at least a couple reasons:

(a) Does Zimmerman mean to suggest that Augustine isn’t Catholic?  [And we can’t just referred to some kind of slimmed down “philosophical” Augustine here.  How many philosophers who teach Augustine actually read Augustine’s sermons and letters, or more importantly here, the anti-Pelagian writings?]  Since I prefer to describe the “Calvinist” position as an “Augustinian” position (which is how Calvin understood it, as did Luther), I also think it is important to see this as an authentically Catholic position.  Granted, post-Tridentine Catholicism settled for a kind of semi-pelagianism.  But that hardly makes the entire tradition libertarian.  Indeed, I think it’s hard to find any libertarians in the Catholic tradition before the Reformation.  Aquinas, for instance, was no libertarian.  For insightful discussion of these issues, see David Burrell’s book, Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective.  (There he shows the resonance between the Augustinian concept of freedom and important Islamic voices as well.) 

(b) As for Anglicanism: again, I’ll concede that a kind of semi-pelagian stance is the status quo.  (Actually, in the American Episcopal church, one could wish for semi-pelagianism rather than the Oprah-like Pelagianism that seems to be the functional orthodoxy in many sectors.)  However, anyone who has read the Belgic Confession or the Heidelberg Catechism will find the Thirty-Nine Articles to be very familiar territory.

3. Further, the problem of evil remains a problem for Arminians/libertarians as well, and I’m not at all convinced that an Arminian/libertarian account does a better job “explaining” this problem.  Indeed, I think any attempt to “explain” it is a first sign of failure.  The biblical response of lament (e.g., Psalm 77) does not even try to pretend to offer an “explanation.”  For further reflection on this, I would recommend Paul Ricoeur’s essay, “Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology” and J. Richard Middleton’s article, “Why the ‘Greater Good’ Isn’t a Defense: Classical Theodicy in Light of. the Biblical Genre of Lament.” Koinonia IX.1&2 (1997).

4. Point (3) needs to be nuanced in at least a couple ways: (a) I’m a tad suspicious about how many libertarian Christian philosophers who claimed the Arminian mantle have actually read Arminius.  It seems to me that Roger Olson’s new book on Arminianism in relation to Calvinism would be eye-opening for these self-professing Arminians.  Perhaps not, but I suspect so.  (b) Calvinism does not preclude a kind of free-will defense with respect to the origin of evil.  Indeed, Augustine offers exactly that.

5. While the Zimmerman/DeRose thesis seems to suggest that philosophers are too smart and compassionate to bite the Calvinism hook, I think one could offer quite a different explanation, viz., that since Christian philosophy still tends to be dominated by methodological assumptions inherited from the Anglo-American tradition, and since this tradition assumes a methodological nominalism that assumes the univocity of being as well as a libertarian account of freedom, a more cynical take would suggest that Christian philosophers are libertarians, not for theological reasons, but because they’ve bought the analytic farm, so to speak.  I also am suspicious that libertarian views of freedom emerge in tandem with libertarian accounts of politics and economics in the Enlightenment—that there is no small connection between libertarian accounts of free will and the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and his neo-conservative disciples.  I don’t mean to suggest that analytic philosophers endorse the latter, but only that they have adopted a methodological assumption that also yields the latter. 

6. There is an element of a red herring here.  After suggesting that those who teach at “secular” universities have different sensibilities vis-à-vis evil (as if teaching at a Christian college makes you more callous and thus more open to entertaining what they take to be draconian pictures of God), Zimmerman says it’s hard to “make the God of Calvinism seem truly benevolent and worthy of worship.”  Well, is the God of Arminius really going to fare much better with Dennett?  Let’s just note a couple problems here:

(a) I have strong reservations about a philosophical or theological project that is driven by the goal of providing a picture of God that is acceptable to philosophers at Rutgers and NYU.  Indeed, when DeRose/Zimmerman frame it this way, I’m struck but how Tillichian this whole project is.  There are vast issues here about authority and methodology to which I can’t do justice.  But it seems to me that this discussion operates within a methodological assumption which adopts a concept of “goodness” that is extrinsic to God (or God’s revelation) and then seeks to get the God of the Bible to conform to this.  Was it Iris Murdoch who remarked about the hubris of Kant, who could pronounce Jesus “good” only after subjecting him to the criterion of goodness established by Enlightenment rationality? 

(b) The problems laid at the feet of the Calvinist God show up in other places for an Arminian God, too.  A libertarian account of freedom does not eliminate the problem of evil; it just moves it to a different place.  An Ariminian God who is omnipotent still has to answer for questions about permission of evil AND eternal punishment of the sinners.  The way to avoid these points is to become a process theist and a universalist.  (And as I understand it, Keith is consistent on these points, which I respect, but disagree with.)  But I would just want to point out that Arminius is in the same boat with Calvin in this respect, so it’s a red herring to point the finger just at Calvinism. 

OK, I feel a little sleep coming on.  While there's much more to be said, I’m off to curl up with Turretin.

Comments

[Andreas Nordlander]

Jamie,
I think you are right: the apologetical needs of Christian philosophers working in secular universities cannot be the reason why they tend to prefer a libertarian account of freedom, as Zimmerman suggests. However, I am equally sceptical about your suggestion that they have “bought the analytic farm”, libertarianism and all. It seems to me that the Anglo-American philosophical tradition has not at all generally favoured a libertarian understanding of freedom. Take, for example, David Hume, G. E. Moore, Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett – fairly representative of the tradition – all of them compatibilists. If libertarianism has been the underdog and compatibilism more like the received view, it is hard to see how this tendency connects to the nominalist methodology you mention and how this could be the reason for the preference of many Christian philosophers.

Here is another suggestion: Might it not be that most Christian analytic philosophers working today see themselves as working in the tradition opened up by Saints Al and Nick (rather than in the general Anglo-American analytic tradition) and that they have been nourished by this “Reformed libertarianism” since philosophical childhood, such that it has become a piece of philosophical furniture that simply goes with being a Christian analytic philosopher? And this does not at all mean having a sophisticated account of agent causation – for all “practical” purposes they only need the logical possibility of libertarian freedom to avail themselves of the Free Will Defence. In other words, one tends to pick it up early on, and one does not even have to think of developing a substantial account of libertarian freedom. (Hegel might not be so high on the reading list either.) As for any scruples about uniting Calvinism with libertarianism – hey, if Plantinga can do it…

In other words: Whose farm? Which Calvinism?

[Gerardo Marti]

Great post. I think this is the kind of conversation we need around here. I'm learning a lot...

[Jeremy Pierce]

On the issue of non-Calvinist views not really having a better response to the problem of evil, I wholeheartedly agree. But as a Calvinist philosopher, I can't agree on the tone issue. I don't think Keith was suggesting that non-Calvinists are smarter than Calvinists, just that non-Calvinists are in a better place apologetically on the issue of the problem of evil. I disagree, but that doesn't mean his claim amounts to a judgment of intelligence. I actually thought Keith was very restrained given his some of his past statements about how morally intolerable Calvinism is.

I also can't understand why you think the analytic tradition assumes libertarianism. Compatibilism is overwhelmingly the dominant view among analytic metaphysicians. It's only in philosophy of religion, particularly among theistic philosophers of religion, that libertarianism is dominant. That fact cannot be explained in terms of simply accepting the orthodoxy of analytic philosophy, which is generally compatibilist. I think the continental tradition is more welcoming to libertarianism than the analytic tradition.

I also don't see a connection between libertarian politics and metaphysical libertarianism. Some of the most influential libertarian economists have been hard determinists, not even compatibilists. It's true that at the popular level you have the Randians, who maintain both libertarianisms, but that doesn't seem to me to be the norm. I certainly don't see Adam Smith has a large influence on libertarians in philosophy of religion (or analytic philosophy in general), most of whom are politically liberal. Conservative political views have even less of a hold on theistic philosophers than compatibilism about free will.

It's true that Dennett isn't going to be attracted to libertarian views, but I don't think that's the point. The point is that Dean, Keith, and other libertarian theistic philosophers think libertarian conceptions of freedom are absolutely essential to any halfway decent response to the problem of evil. So while it would be difficult to convince Dennett of libertarianism, they might be able to get him to admit that it's an internally coherent account. They don't think Calvinists can have such an account because they can't respond to the problem of evil. I agree that in this respect it's basing a hope of convincing other philosophers of what ironically involves denying the overwhelming consensus in metaphysics. That does strike me as strange. But if you don't think it can be done any other way, it makes some sense.

[dh]

What problem of evil or morally intolerable of Calvinism? When one reads Scripture like "Except a man be Born Again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." or the Bible says those whose names were not written in the lambs book of life were thrown into utter darkness (making it strange for people to think that ALL are in the book when it mentions what happens to those who aren't) with "It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement." What is immoral about these things God states in His Word? Who are we to judge what is "good and evil" when it is God who does this by His omniscience, omnipotence and Holiness. When it is a fact that people condemn themselves to hell by choosing to reject Christ, one must look at where the problem resides. THe fact it is humans choice of evil by way of Adam and the sin nature therein that is the problem not a problem of God. All of this talk "outside of Scripture" of post physical conversion, etc. are really man adding to Scripture which God clearly rebukes from His Word. Nowhere in SCripture does it say people will be converted after physical death so why say that that is the case when it isn't in Scripture? The fact is if it wasn't for Christ's death and resurrection we would all deserve death and it is by Grace that the gift of eternal life is made available to all in the first place. It is therefore logical, moral and consistent that some will choose Christ and obtain eternal life and others will reject Christ and obtain eternal death. "Without Faith it is impossible to please God." "If you deny Me I will deny you before My Father in heaven."

[Nathaniel Wood]

I'm not sure what we can make of the possible connection between libertarian conceptions of free will and modern liberal politics, even if there may be a historical connection between them and even if there may be a logical connection in many people's minds. I'd like to think that a lot of the Christian philosophers out there who admire libertarianism admire it for the same reason I do, that is, that even the best defenses of "compatibilist" conceptions of freedom just aren't convincing in the face of horrendous evils. Perhaps the reason we don't find those defenses convincing is in part shaped by our culture and our political climate, but in all fairness, we'd have to reverse this analysis and turn it back against the classical compatibilists: what aspects of their less-than-fully-Christian cultures helped them to be satisfied with the views of evil and freedom that they held?

[Luke Gelinas]

Hi Jaime,

Just a small point: my understanding is that Aquinas is typically considered to be some sort of libertarian. He seems pretty clearly to endorse the principle of alternative possibilities.

[dh]

You say "...just aren't convincing in the face of horrendous evils." The fact is we live in an evil world that was changed from good by the choice of Adam and Eve to disobey God. This set forth in motion all of the evil in the world. To me it makes sense that "sin seperates ourselves from God" also the world is a "fallen world". These "horrendous evils" don't originate from God but originate from sin and Satan who magnifies the problem of the original sin. Aquinas? I much rather look at Augustine than him.

[Brandon Jones]

Thanks for this response. I'm excited to see a discussion again here. I don't have much to say constructively except that I agree that one must never lose sight of Augustine's catholicity. His view of perseverance is case in point.

[Andrew Moon]

Hi all,
Don't forget that there are analytic philosophers who accept libertarian accounts of free will apart from any of its merits (purported or otherwise) in responding to PoE. If we're taking the standard definition of libertarianism (the thesis that 1) free will exists and 2) free will is incompatible with causal determinism), many people just find it extremely plausible that (1) and (2) are both true.

For few will deny the existence of free will. And most people are inclined (whether or not they're under the reigns of Saints Al and Nick), to think that free will is incompatible with determinism. This inclination was solidified for me after studying van Inwagen's Consequence Argument.

Now I don't want to get into debates about the Consequence Argument. My point is as follows. The impression I was getting from the post and the above comments was that analytic philosophers who are libertarians are libertarians only because they want a response to PoE or because Alvin Plantinga is a libertarian or because it's the current trend or wave. Don't forget that some analytic philosophers are libertarians because they just find it intuitively plausible and the arguments for it compelling.

[Luke Gelinas]

Can't resist another thought or two. I like Jaime's emphasis on lament. It seems to me that, in general, the church is woeful at exemplifying biblical modes of responding to evil. But it also seems to me that these sorts of biblical responses--lament, protest, etc.--do most of their work on an affective or emotional level. They're helpful primarily in relation to the existential difficulties (for lack of a better description) evil presents for theists.

But without wanting to endorse a sharp cleavage between the affective and the intellectual, there might be--and indeed it seems to me clearly *are*--cases where lament isn't going to cut it, simply b/c the difficulty experienced is more cognitive. If one of your students is struggling w/ whether her belief in God and the existence of evil entail a contradiction, or whether all the seemingly pointless evil makes theism unreasonable, you can, to be sure, encourage the affective responses the biblical writers display; but you’ll probably also want to point her in the direction of responses to these problems that function at a more intellectual level. Lament may be extremely helpful in some ways, but I’m skeptical that it can remove or assuage the sort of cognitive dissonance arguments from evil often provoke.

We should also be clear about what Christian analytic philosophers are doing when they respond to these sorts of arguments. It strikes me as dubious that they’re most often or even usually trying to give an “explanation” of evil, which (I take it) would amount to something like a theodicy. Most are content to give a “defense” of theism in the face of the argument in question, which usually just amounts to trying to show that the argument doesn’t work. Some might go the further step of attempting a full-blown explanation of evil, but this is (so far as I can tell) far less common. (And while it might be true that the biblical writers give us no explicit injunction or model for how to pursue this sort of intellectual project, it strikes me as extremely doubtful that it’s *inconsistent* w/ Scriptural premises, or incapable of finding inductive support therein.)

One final thought. It seems to me that the sort of work analytic theists do in relation to evil can be conceived of in broadly Augustinian (or Anselmian Proslogionian) terms, in the sense that it comes after faith, and grows out of a desire to understand more fully what it is that we as Christians believe. Thanks Jaime for writing this post.

[George Hunsinger]

I appreciate Jamie's measured comments here and in the previous thread. I'm also grateful for the important caveats of jksmith.

While I don't have much to add, here are some random thoughts.

1. There is more than one variety of "Calvinism." Not all of it is "Neo," and not all of it emanates from Holland. Or Grand Rapids. (Important example from a previous generation: Kolfhaus. From a more recent generation: Lukas Vischer.)

2. Consider two ways of posing a question.
(a) Is Calvin a determinist?
(b) In what sense might Calvin be seen as a determinist, and
in what sense not?

3. Option (b) could be extended to ask about "compatibilism" and "libertarianism" in Calvin as well.

4. My view is that Calvin does not fit neatly into any of these categories, though elements of each type are present in his writings.

5. There are more sorts of thing in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[James K.A. Smith]

I appreciate everyone's comments here, and wish I could do them justice, but lack the time. (Is there an ethical issue here: should one avoid posting if one can't devote proper time to responding to comments? I always feel convicted about that [but hey, I'm a Calvinist, so guilt is kind of a virtue].)

I'll just say a few things:

(1) I'm happy to receive correction re: the state of affairs in analytic philosophy vis-a-vis compatibilism and libertarianism. (Luke will confirm that I'm no expert in analytic philosophy! ;-) My perception is no doubt due to the fact that almost all the analytic philosophers I know are also Christian philosophers who operate in the orbit of Saints Al and Nick--so I'm sure there's a more nuanced account of this as Andreas and others have suggested.

(2) Regarding Aquinas: Here I share George's concern that the terms of the debate as cooked up by analytic discussions makes it hard to do justice to historical figures who don't really fit (e.g., I would loathe describing myself as a 'determinist'). When I made the point about Aquinas (vis-a-vis Augustine), I had two things in mind: (a) Aquinas held a view of predestination that sure sounds alot like Calvin (and Augustine in the anti-Pelagian writings); and (b) like Augustine, Aquinas thinks that one is properly "free" when one is empowered to choose the good--rather than a "negative" conception of freedom as the ability or opportunity to choose between a range of options. This latter "negative" notion is what I mean by a "libertarian" conception of freedom, but perhaps that use of the nomenclature does not map too well onto analytic discussions.

(3) Finally, the lament/theodicy question is too close to me for comment right now. We just returned from Canada where we were mourning with our family as we buried our niece, Sophie, who was just 17-months-old. My sister-in-law and her husband asked to me to co-officiate the funeral (the most terrifying charge of my life), and the opening text I selected was Psalm 77; the closing text was Rev. 21 (Romans 8 was nowhere to be heard). From their testimony, I think the family and community found comfort, not in answers (which I didn't even attempt to provide, since I don't see any), but a sense that God embraced us even while we protested against Him. Sometimes we philosophers and theologians inhabit a rarified atmosphere that doesn't bear much similarity to the world our brothers and sisterns inhabit on the ground.

[Dean Zimmerman]

Thanks a lot, Keith, for getting me in all this hot water with the Calvinists! How uncomfortable. After all, some of my best friends are Calvinists….

Seriously, though, I thought I should say something, since some folks have been offended by my naïve little hypothesis about the reasons Christian philosophers are overwhelmingly libertarians (and explicitly opposed to Calvinist views about freedom and moral responsibility) even though Calvinism is gaining steam among theologians within the Protestant churches from which most of these philosophers come.

I don’t think anyone on the blog is really questioning my claim that libertarian theories of freedom, incompatible with what Keith calls “divine determination”, predominate among Christian philosophers in the analytic tradition. The point has also been made that libertarianism is very much the minority position among analytic philosophers, generally. Indeed, compatibilism about free action and determinism had almost swept the field by the 70s, Roderick Chisholm being a nearly lone hold-out, until Peter van Inwagen – not yet a Christian at the time, but someone more willing than many to follow an argument where it leads — brought libertarianism back into the limelight. Nowadays, a great many of those who write about the metaphysics of freedom are libertarians — but I think it’s still true that a majority of philosophers in the Anglo-American philosophical community take compatibilism for granted; libertarianism remains a minority view. So it isn’t just a matter of Christian philosophers buying into the orthodox view of freedom among contemporary analytic philosophers. Having to be libertarians is just one more strike against us, in most of our colleagues’ books.

I was being very sloppy when I said that Christians will not want to be Calvinists with respect to grace and predestination if they also want to “hew closely to orthodoxy” within Catholicism and Anglicanism and Arminian traditions like Methodism and Pentecostalism. I shouldn’t have used the word “orthodoxy” (in this blog of all places! though, remember, the passage wasn’t written for you folks). I was thinking, for instance, of Catholics who want to stick close to Catholic doctrine as it has been propounded in the last several hundred years; or Methodists who want to remain close to their theological roots. In any case, the point was only supposed to be that there are plenty of Christians who, to become Calvinists, would have to repudiate their own theological tradition. And so there will be Christians looking for an alternative to Calvinism. Molinism, the view I criticize in my paper, can come to look like the best alternative going. I was simply trying to make the view I was going to attack look worth attacking.

Right before the passage Keith took from my paper, there was a description of Open Theism, emphasizing the reasons it will lack appeal for many Christians — i.e., the lack of foreknowledge and the risk-taking it attributes to God. And then I gave a no doubt unsatisfactory gloss on what I’d mean by “Calvinism” in the rest of the paper — basically, just the compatibility of free, morally responsible action with either causal determinism (for which God is ultimately responsible) or divine determinism. And I emphasized the advantages Calvinism has for Christians uncomfortable with the two aspects of Open Theism I mentioned.

Then there comes the passage Keith posted, which is really just an aside in a paper all about the details of Molinism. The point was to explain why Molinism seems so important to so many analytic philosophers: it can appear to be the only avenue between the Scylla and Charybdis of Open Theism and Calvinism.

I’m sorry that the tone of this passage came across the way it apparently did, to some. Here’s what was apparently the most offensive bit: “Why does Calvinism have much less appeal for Christian philosophers than theologians? I do not know; but here is an hypothesis: Most Christian theologians are trained in and continue to teach at Christian colleges and seminaries; whereas most Christian philosophers study and teach in more secular environments. I suspect that one result of this difference is that the problem of evil, as an obstacle to faith for contemporary people, looms larger for the philosophers. Libertarian theories of freedom provide a means for explaining the point of a great deal of evil in a way that at least makes sense to our skeptical colleagues and students — even if they reject libertarianism. In my environment, at any rate, it is hard to make the God of Calvinism seem truly benevolent and worthy of worship.” I can see why the passage might make a Calvinist theologian bristle, especially if he or she has met one too many smart-alecky analytic philosophers. But what I said can be read in more than one way, and I didn’t mean to foreclose a reading that is less flattering to philosophers than to theologians (although I also didn’t try very hard to hide my own take on things).

I was saying that Christian philosophers are grasping at the only chance they have of making their God seem halfway tolerable to the students and colleagues with whom they have mainly to deal. We’re surrounded by people who, for whatever reason, good or bad, would (and do) regard Calvin’s God as a moral monster. Maybe they wouldn’t do so if they properly understood all the nuances of Calvin’s account of freedom; but if they see that divine determinism is part of the package, they’ll never get that far. Maybe we Christian philosophers are buying into the spirit of the age, but we can hardly help but be affected by the fact that we find ourselves challenged to defend our faith in this context. And I don’t think this is a matter of making God acceptable to philosophers at Rutgers and NYU, as was suggested in one post – quite a task that would be! For me, it’s a matter of trying to make my faith intelligible, in the face of the problem of evil, to people like the hundreds of New Jersey undergrads who take philosophy of religion classes at Rutgers every year — a big state university serving one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse populations in the U.S. We certainly have a much more religiously skeptical student body than that of, say, Wheaton or Calvin (or Notre Dame, where I taught for many years). My hypothesis could easily be given this sort of spin: that theologians and other evangelical intellectual leaders with a base of operations in religious institutions are somewhat less influenced by the spirit of the age, as it is manifested in my environment. I had intended to leave it more or less an open question whether we philosophers are capitulating to contemporary prejudices, or theologians are insensitive to warranted modern moral qualms. (Of course, both may be the case!)

I suppose that the passage betrays my own inclination to accept the moral assumptions that make my nonChristian students and colleagues reject out of hand any theological position that contains divine determinism. (One of our graduate students here at Rutgers, Jason Turner, recently showed me a way to make divine determinism not seem so bad – but it requires complete rejection of Calvinism, so never mind!). Although I did mean to tip my hand (to reveal my agreement with my students, when it comes to their instinctive moral criticisms of theological positions that include the predestination of the damned), I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that Calvinist theologians “are not really as smart as philosophers”, nor that nobody “smart and compassionate” could be a Calvinist. I really don’t see anything nearly so snide as that in the passage above — though, given the reaction, I may try to tone this passage down even further, or drop it altogether, in the final version of the paper. Clearly, I’m stepping into the middle of a firefight that’s been going on for some time, and (to switch metaphors) I don’t want to fan the flames.

I also honestly don’t know how plausible this is as an explanatory hypothesis. My tentativeness was not merely rhetorical. It is striking to me how few Christian philosophers are compatibilists about freedom and divine determination or causal determinism; and how many evangelical intellectuals of all kinds (not just theologians) are attracted to Calvinism — even if they come from a church tradition that is mainly Arminian. It really does seem to need explaining. Maybe my suggested explanation is utterly wrong. Perhaps the students at Calvin and Baylor and Wheaton are just as morally outraged by divine determinism as my students, so there’s very little difference between us on that score; or perhaps Calvinist professors in Christian colleges and seminaries are just as sensitive to the anti-Calvinistic intuitions of their secular counterparts (in other schools) as I am to the anti-Calvinistic intuitions of my peers; but the theologians are simply less tempted than I am to go along with these intuitions. So, even if they were here at Rutgers for their whole careers, they wouldn’t get sucked into the spirit of the age, like I have (although, from a staunchly Arminian Free Methodist and Pentecostal background, I came by my libertarian version of the Free Will Defense honestly!). There are plenty of other plausible explanatory hypotheses to try out instead of mine – for instance, the “Saints Al and Nick” hypothesis floated by Andreas Nordlander in his post. (I think there’s a lot to be said for that one.) One might attribute it to a move of the Holy Spirit among theologians and evangelicals more broadly — a move of the Spirit we stiff-necked philosophers are resisting.
No doubt the real explanation for the continuing unpopularity of Calvinism among relatively theologically conservative Christian philosophers, despite its apparently growing influence among members of the evangelical intellectual elite, is an incredibly complicated collection of factors. I still suspect that my hypothesis has something to do with it; but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if I’m wrong. I’m much more interested in the question which of Calvinism, Molinism, Open Theism, … is true. But that will have to be settled in another thread, I suspect!

[Patrick Todd]

Here’s one consideration that may partially explain why the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers are libertarians. Christian philosophers are concerned not merely with whether moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism, but whether it’s compatible with a more robust form of determinism, namely *theological determinism*. Granted, most non-theistic philosophers are compatibilists, but most are simply compatibilists with respect to mere causal determinism (past events + laws of nature entail one unique future) and moral responsibility. They’re *not* committed to thinking that it’s also compatible with the thesis that one’s acts have been determined by God, and my hunch is that, if pressed, many naturalistic compatibilists would reject compatibility between theological determinism and moral responsibility.

Why? For reasons having to do with manipulation thought experiments (e.g. Robert Kane’s “covert non-constraining control” cases and Al Mele’s “Zygote Argument”), many philosophers think it’s very hard to accept that one can be morally responsible when one’s acts have been determined by an agent who intends for you to do what you do. So many compatibilists, e.g. Dennett, try to make a principled distinction between determination by agents and by natural causes, claiming that while the former *does* threaten moral responsibility, the latter does not. (One isn’t being *controlled* or *manipulated* by natural causes, so the thought goes.)

So when the theist wonders whether responsibility is compatible with determinism, he’s not merely wondering whether it’s compatible with naturalism + determinism; he’s got to consider that the determined outcomes in the world have their ultimate intentional source in God. That’s hard to accept. In other words, I suspect that if there were suddenly a widespread conversion to theism in the philosophical community, lots more philosophers would become attracted to libertarian accounts of free will and moral responsibility, simply for the reason that while causal determinism is one thing, theological determinism is quite another. (As it happens, I don’t think there’s a principled distinction to be made here with respect to moral responsibility, but that’s controversial.)

Maybe something like this is at work in why a greater proportion of theistic philosophers are attracted to libertarianism.

[Dean Zimmerman]

There's a lot of truth in what you say, Patrick Todd, about it's being more difficult to believe that freedom and moral responsibility are compatible with divine determinism than with mere causal determinism. That might help explain why most Christian philosophers are libertarians while most philosophers are compatibilists. But I don't think it helps much with the phenomenon I was wondering about -- the fact that Calvinism is so attractive to theologians and evangelical leaders, even ones from non-Calvinist backgrounds, while libertarian views incompatible with Calvinism are extremely widely held among Christian philosophers, even if they come from a reformed background. The thought experiments you mention that support the idea that causally determined actions aren't free when there's an agent manipulating the causes... those sorts of cases surely must have occurred to anyone who has worried about free will from a theological perspective. They're simply not moved by them, while we are — even those of us who were brought up Calvinists, or who continue to attend churches that teach reformed doctrine (together, that will include a sizable chunk of the Protestants in philosophy, I'm guessing). What I was wondering was whether there might be differences in our environments, in the audiences to whom we address ourselves, that would help explain these differing moral intuitions.

Again, I want to emphasize that I wasn't trying to explain the difference in terms of one group being "smarter". I suppose it will be tempting to explain the difference in terms of my group having less spiritual discernment, and being more interested in what people think at NYU and Rutgers and Princeton than what our church traditions are teaching us -- actually, maybe that suggestion was floated, now that I think of it!

[Patrick Todd]

Hi Dean, and everyone,

Yeah, maybe that last bit helps with why there are more theists who are libertarians than compatibilists, but not with the phenomenon of why Calvinism is more attractive to theologians and evangelical leaders than it is to Christian philosophers. So here’s a thought on this latter phenomenon. This is difficult terrain, and I simply float this theory.

In general, there’s a difference in temperament between theologians and Christian philosophers. Philosophers are (again, in general) more willing than their theologian counterparts to let a priori arguments and intuitions guide their theorizing. That’s why they became philosophers rather than theologians. Theologians, however, are, in general, more willing than their philosophical counterparts to let revelation and authority guide their theorizing (and trump a priori considerations and intuitions).

For instance, I’m an open theist for almost entirely philosophical reasons having to do with the incompatibility of exhaustive foreknowledge and libertarian freedom. (I'm not very impressed by scriptural arguments for open theism, e.g. "divine ignorance" texts.) What now concerns me is going back to scripture (and the tradition more generally) and *making it fit*, i.e. trying to reinterpret scripture in light of philosophical arguments. I get the sense, though, that this sort of thing would make most evangelical theologians cringe. But there it is. Of course, I admit that scripture places constraints on the range of possible positions one might adopt, and if I thought open theism stood *no chance* of being scripturally compatible, I wouldn't endorse it. But the point is that I'm aiming for the weak thesis that scripture and open theism are *compatible*; I don't feel the urge to show how it is the most plausible reading thereof.

I'm not claiming that most Christian philosophers consciously do this all the time, or even would endorse the sort of thing I've outlined above, but I do think this sort of thing happens a lot, even if many Christian philosophers would be embarrassed to admit it. (Whether they should be is an interesting question.) In any case, a lot of theologians (I take it) would think that this is precisely backwards: one should first determine the most plausible reading of scripture, and then let that drive one's philosophical theorizing. If one's theorizing doesn't harmonize with what one takes to be the most plausible reading of scripture (on its own terms), then one shouldn't go looking for other possible ways to interpret scripture that one thinks are less plausible but more philosophically adequate. But the philosopher is more likely to think: philosophical considerations just are the sorts of things than can determine whether a reading of scripture is plausible or not. For instance, a staunch incompatibilist won't think a reading of scripture is plausible if it entails compatibilism; *incompatibilism, to him, will be more obviously true than any reading of scripture that entails compatibilism.*

So it looks like we may have a decent explanation of the phenomenon if it’s the case that (1) there are strong scriptural grounds for Calvinism (or at any rate: it's widely held amongst evangelicals that Calvinism is more scripturally sound than Arminianism) and (2) Calvinism is faced with severe philosophical problems. I think (1) and (2) are both true. Re: (1), the scriptural merits of Calvinism I've always found to be (unfortunately) very impressive. Lots of others think so too, but just can't bring themselves to believe in it. At any rate, what open theist enjoys reading e.g. Romans 9 (if he hasn't already begun avoiding it)? Re: (2), Calvinism strikes even a lot of Calvinists as being prima facie counterintuitive. (I've got a really smart Calvinist buddy here, and he'll admit it.) I could elaborate here, but this has gotten long!

In sum: there are powerful scriptural considerations that many evangelicals theologians take to be decisive on behalf of Calvinism, and there are philosophical considerations that many Christian philosophers take to be decisive reason to reject it. Hence, given the relative priorities of the two camps, we should expect there to be more theologians attracted to Calvinism than there are philosophers. Maybe something like this helps?

[Jeremy Pierce]

Patrick, I didn't know about this segment of compatibilists who think divine determinism is not the right kind to allow for freedom. What's funny is that I've seen lots of statements by Calvinists to the opposite effect. For example, they will say that Dennett's naturalistic determinism does not allow for human freedom in the way that a divine determinism does. (Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost made exactly this claim within the last few weeks, and I've heard it lots of times before.) I think in some way it's related to Plantinga's argument that naturalism (completely aside from the issue of determinism) doesn't allow for certain kinds of things that seem obvious to us as persons. But a divinely ordered determinism is different, since it allows for final causes on two levels. God can have a purpose for what we do, but he can allow for us to have our own purposes, as Joseph famously puts it in the last chapter of Genesis. But with naturalism, according to Plantinga-style arguments, no one could intend anything. There are no final causes.

[James K.A. Smith]

I appreciate Dean's taking the time to reply and contextualize his comments. (Keith: I think you owe Dean a beer or two! Or are libertarians also teetotalers? ;-)

I would just make one further comment: Dean's explanatory hypothesis still assumes a kind of causality which I think is open to question. That is, the picture seems to assume that those (Calvinists) who teach in religious institutions are not pressed (caused) to deal with the problem of evil in a way that makes them question their Calvinism. Or, conversely, because analytic Christian philosophers are at places like Rutgers, they are pressed (caused) to adopt a libertarian account in order to provide a defense of the faith. In both scenarios, the picture seems to assume that these philosophers and theologians land in their institutional contexts with a kind of blank slate, and then are pressed into research programs occasioned by their institutional contexts.

But, of course, the causality might go the other way: it might be precisely because one refuses to play by the rules of the game laid down by what counts as "rational" and "defensible" in the so-called secular academy that one chooses to work within a particular confessional context. In other words, I think it can be precisely one's account of "rationality" that influences how we choose our institutional contexts. At least this was the case for me: Because I do not think there is anything like a "universal" or "natural" reason (for theological reasons!), and thus am not sanguine about "apologetic" projects of this sort, I have chosen to remain in a confessional academic context. My point is just that we are not "thrown" (for the most part) into our institutional contexts, and then our thinking and positions generated ex nihilo in those environments. Rather, our theoretical (and theological) predilections already influence the kinds of institutional environments we'll be inclinded to inhabit.

Admittedly, there is a significant discussion to be had here about the apologetic project and how we think about rationality. It seems to me that Dean and Keith's approach assumes an apologetic stance which, to my mind, concedes too much or defers too much to the nonbeliever and lets her or him set the standards for what is "moral," "rational," "defensible," and "worthy of worship." In contrast, I guess I'm more inclined to expect the Gospel to be a "scandal," and for the wisdom of God to appear as foolishness and madness to the wise at NYU (1 Cor. 1:18-31). I don't expect "a natural man" to accept "the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:14); rather, I expect such mysteries to be rejected as scandalous (1 Cor. 2:6-10).

I don't think that precludes dialogue, but I do think that we ought to begin from the integrity of what Christian revelation reveals, in all its scandalous particularity.

[Tim McGee]

A few comments on Aquinas and Augustine:

For both, God's divine causality was not in some kind of competition with human causality--in other words, unlike Luther, they weren't working out of a nominalist framework. Thus, even if one has good reasons for being a libertarian, it does not follow that this conception of freedom is incompatible with God's divine causality (and hence libertarianism). As Aquinas often reminds us (and here he is more Augustinian than Luther), God moves creatures in a way that is natural to them, and hence, for us humans, that means he moves us in a way that causes us to act freely.

Secondly: for both Augustine and Aquinas, even the state in the Garden was a graced-state--there has never been a time when humans were able to be united to God without a gift of grace moving our will (freely).

Finally, for both Augustine and Aquinas, the will is teleologically ordered--it's not an indiscriminate capacity to choose between options, but is an inclination towards (and ability to cleave to) the good. thus the fall damages this capacity (for augustine--to such an extent that the self cannot even coherently narrate its actions: think of the pear tree scene in the confessions).

And one non-Augustinian comment:
There seems to be some motivation for libertarianism (as incompatible with divine causality) because of its connection to theodicy (FWD). Among other problems, this argument assumes that Christians can and should be engaged in the project of constructing a theoretical solution to the problem of evil (Karen Kilby recently wrote an interesting paper on this issue--Evil and the Limits of Theology--available online). At the very least, one should be cautious when constructing theological positions on the basis of "it's the best way i can see to answer the problem of evil."

[Tim McGee]

It occured to me that i forgot to explain the relevance of my comments--I'm fairly sick at the moment.

To try to connect it all together: some of the concepts and questions that we have inherited from modernity are theologically and philosophically questionable--e.g., the non-teleological account of freedom, the incompatibility of divine agency with human agency. When one prioritizes apologetics over dogmatics (which one does whenever one argues for a dogmatic position on the basis of its apologetical value), one is led to accept (instead of interrogate) the question at face value as well as the tradition that gives the question meaning. Given that many of the concepts and questions are distinct to modernity (see Ken Surin's work on the problem of evil for this point), one is led to accept some of modernity's very problematic assumptions.

In other words, instead of letting modern notions of the self, will, grace, and divine causality determine the focus and shape of our theological questions, I think a rereading of Augustine and Aquinas can help free us from some of those restraints and cast fresh light on the status of the questions being asked (that explains my first post).

James K.A Smith's point about the scandal of the gospel is even more essential to bear in mind when the wisdom of the world is one rooted in an anti-christian endevor, modernity (which is nothing less than the attempt to renarrate human identity outside of Christ). It is a helpful reminder that many of our "intuitions" may be remainders from that project (and hence things to remedy instead of using as starting points).

[Matt Benton]

This has been an excellent discussion overall; but I'm led to ask Jamie about a few points he makes.

Jamie, you say: "Because I do not think there is anything like a "universal" or "natural" reason (for theological reasons!), and thus am not sanguine about "apologetic" projects of this sort, I have chosen to remain in a confessional academic context." But your very point about causality makes me wonder whether it might be that the several confessional academic contexts which you have inhabited have led you to your view(s) about "natural/universal" reason (after all, you have almost entirely been trained, and have taught, in theological/confessional settings).

Second, about your Scriptural citations regarding scandal & foolishness to those outside the faith: it's one thing to say that the Gospel should be expected to sound like foolishness to non-believers ("at NYU"). But what about when, as a believer, *I* hit sticky points in philosophical theology? While I may allow that, at bottom, I have to throw my hands at "mystery," I don't want parts of my theology to be foolishness and madness *to me*. So I might shift things around a bit to make more sense of it (this might include being a libertarian and considering my view about whether contingent free acts have truth-values, etc.), not to be able to explain it to anyone else, but for it to be acceptable by my own philosophical and theological lights; of course, this still involves testing it by Scripture, and so on.

But your statement about "the integrity of what Christian revelation reveals" is precisely what is at issue when I'm considering all these things. It's not like there are some simple and obvious answers from Christian revelation about what to think about the nature of human freedom, the scope of omniscience, the reasons for why there's horrendous evil, etc.

[James K.A. Smith]

Matt Benton makes several excellent points. I didn't mean to suggest that one's positions on these matters weren't shaped by one's training and formation. It is certainly the case that my grad school formation at a graduate program in the Reformed tradition, and then a doctoral program at an Augustinian university, shaped my views re: rationality, presuppositions, etc. (Though, I think it fair to note that I also underwent an intellectual conversion in these contexts, too. When I left undergrad and headed for grad school, I was a decided Protestant "Thomist" of a sort who was wholeheartedly committed to the apologetic project.) The conversion even had a bit of an Augustinian drama to it: as if I was invited to "pick up and read," I remember being in tears my first week of grad school as I read Dooyeweerd's _In the Twilight of Western Thought_ and saw my tidy rationalist system collapsing around me. It was this understanding of reason's being grounded in faith which then also most resonated with what I could see in the Scriptures (e.g., 1 Cor. 1-2, as noted previously). For me, this 'conversion' was a kind of de-scholasticization: it prompted me to consider areas in which I had unwittingly adopted theoretical starting points that were not integrally rooted in the biblical imagination.

I don't think any of us would want to hold to some kind of "graduate-school-determinism" about these matters, however. That is, hopefully we're not reductionistically suggesting that if I'd only gone to Rutgers (well, I would never have got in, but let's pretend), I would have had a robust confidence in reason and would be a convinced libertarian.

This raises another interesting point, again prompted by Matt B's post: despite our different institutional contexts, one might hope that Christian philosophers at both Christian colleges and secular universities would share in common an _ecclesial_ experience of worship. And one might even hope that there is a certain catholicity to those common experiences. But what most profoundly shapes our intellectual imaginations? Our grad school courses or participation in the Eucharist? I'd hope for the latter, but I'm not confident that's the case.

This raises a final point: I didn't mean to suggest that Calvinists were just believing the Bible, while libertarians were listening to Baal or refusing the believe what is "obvious" in Scripture. I'd be the last one to suggest that. However, may I timidly say that I find many Christian "philosophers" to be quite remarkably naive about theology--and yet often quite willing to make judgments about it. Or, if I could put it more positively, I think it would be salutary for all of us to think long and hard about what it would mean to submit our theorizing to the discipline of the church's tradition as the ongoing revelation of the Spirit. We're not bad as quoting Bible passages that seem relevant to our ideas, or that support them, but I'm less convinced that our theoretical imagination is shaped by the church's tradition--especially the liturgical tradition. Instead, I find we are all too ready to abandon aspects of the church's tradition if we think it doesn't resonate with what *we* or our colleagues would think constitutes an "acceptable" God.

[Dean Zimmerman]

Those influenced by postmodern thinkers sometimes say that analytic philosophers are relics, throwbacks to "modernity". But in some respects we are, most of us, quite "postmodern" -- and in a way that explains why we might tend to display a lack of fidelity to theological traditions.

One hallmark of postmodernity is supposed to be scaled back epistemological expectations. We don't expect to be able to propound philosophical theories that will explain everything and be so compelling that any sensible person can be convinced by our arguments. Equally rational people can disagree, even in the face of more or less the same evidence (or the same publically accessible evidence -- Peter van Inwagen makes some nice distinctions here). Similarly, in theology, I should think we would tend to be radically fallibilist as well -- not that someone isn't right, but that no one is in a position to claim to be able to prove to any reasonable person that they are right; and that we should be skeptical of claims to certainty about theological particulars.

In these postmodern circumstances, come-what-may commitment to a theological tradition is harder to maintain; and the plausibility of Calvinism or Arminianism etc. becomes just another claim upon my intellect, alongside the plausibility of compatibilism or incompatibilism.

I've undergone no major theological shifts, being fourth generation free-will methodist/holiness/pentecostal, never tempted by Calvinism. But I've certainly seen many of my friends picking and choosing from various theological traditions other than that of their denominational commitments. And part of the freedom they feel to do this is due, I think, to the fact that they don't expect to have anything like certainty in these matters, and they don't believe those who claim to have certainty.

I'm not saying anything about the goodness/badness of these lowered epistemological expectations in matters of doctrine; and I'm not saying they're peculiar to philosophers (I'm sure they're not -- it's just that people outside of philosophy keep saying we're infected with modernist hubris and so on). I'm also not saying this is the right response to scaled back expectations to be able to know exactly which doctrinal traditions are closest to the truth; maybe it should be "stick to the one you started in, come-what-may" or "pick one, and then don't change" or something more sensible than that that's halfway between...

And I know there are (vaguely) postmodern currents that suggest commitment to tradition is the only way to even have access to norms of rationality and so on; so maybe if we bought into something like that, we'd take one attitude toward theological traditions, and another to the results of our philosophical reflections.

In haste...