Calvinism is the view that God decides whether you go to Heaven or Hell and nothing that you do affects where you end up. If God wants to save you, then he will, and you can’t resist it. If God wants to damn you, then he will, and you can’t resist that. God saves some people and not others, but not based on anything that the people themselves do. God does not want everyone to be saved.
Molinism is the view that God draws people to him, and they can resist his drawing, just like in any ordinary love relationship where the beloved is not drawn against his or her will. On Molinism, God also places people in the best time and place for them to respond to him, depending on what evidence they need. He can do this because he knows how people respond in any set of circumstances. If people go to Hell, then the people are responsible, on Molinism. But God wants everyone to be saved, but not against their will. God actualizes a world in which he is sovereign over everything that happens, and gets the outcome that he wants, but without violating free will.
So here’s a verse that I think is troubling to both sides, Luke 10:13:
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
This verse is a problem for Molinists, because if the people in these cities would have repented if they got better miracles, then why didn’t they get the better miracles they needed? If God loves them, then why didn’t he give them better miracles?
And this verse is a problem for Calvinists, because it shows that people do have free will to respond to evidence that God allows them to see. Why would evidence matter on Calvinism, since God can just flip the person’s switch (or not). If God wanted those people to repent, he could just do it without having to care about evidence, since he is the one who decides whether they believe in him or not, totally apart from their free will.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Hmm, I think WLC addressed that text once. I heard it was just hyperbole to emphasize a point. It would be like saying “Even a mentally retarded person would understand this” as a sort of insult or emphasis. On the other hand, if we did take it literally, then I suppose it would depend on the meaning of “repentance”.
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Just to let you know, your depiction of Calvinism is inaccurate. Reformed theology does not deny that humans have free will, does not affirm that “nothing that you do affects where you end up.” It does not (cannot) deny that God wants all men to come come to repentance. (I mean, that’s what the verse says, isn’t it?) Reformed theology holds that people are damned for sin (not some capricious will of God). In fact, some of the best Apologists are Calvinists.
I won’t offer any insight as to whether the passage is harder for Calvinists or Molinists, but I’m quite certain that you don’t quite understand what Calvinism teaches. Your presentation is a caricature.
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Well, here’s what I think. What Calvinism teaches is that God decides, apart from any external constraint, who to regenerate. This is called unconditional election. The regeneration occurs totally apart from the person’s will. And there is another doctrine called irresistible grace, which states that regeneration is irresistible by human free will – irresistible grace. God’s decision to regenerate ultimately forces the person to go to Heaven.
What Calvinism says is that God chooses whether you go to Heaven or Hell, and nothing you decide has any effect on his decision. There is no free will decision that affects whether you are saved or not on Calvinism. God makes that decision for you, and that means that God literally sends people to Hell or not, by his own free choice to act or not.
And that results in all kinds of nasty things, as William Lane Craig explains:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8111
My understanding is that Calvinism requires a doctrine called monergism.
Wikipedia definition:
Monergism describes the position in Christian theology of those who believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, works to bring about effectually the salvation of individuals through spiritual regeneration without cooperation from the individual.
And just so no one freaks out, I think that Lutheran soteriology is closest to my own views.
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WK, to be fair, I think you’re describing hyper-calvinism. Hyper-Calvinists teach a symmetrical view of predestination, i.e., God decreed the elect’s salvation from eternity, in time intervenes in their lives and creates saving faith in their hearts by grace. Those who aren’t saved, God in time, intrudes into their lives and creates fresh evil in their souls (God causes sin) enuring their ultimate damnation. That is not orthodox reformed theology.
Sproul writes in his commentary on Romans:
“In the case of the elect, God positively intervenes in their lives to rescue them from their corrupt condition. The Holy Spirit changes their hearts of stone to hearts alive to the things of God. In the case of the reprobate, He leaves them to their own devices, but he does not intrude in their lives to create fresh evil. In the mass of fallen humanity, some receive the saving grace of of God; God intervenes to rescue them from their sinful condition. He passes over the remainder. Those whom he passes over are not elect; they are reprobate. They are judged because of the evil already present in them…” pg. 328
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Well, don’t get mad at me, but hyper-Calvinism is the name that Calvinists give for the logical outworkings of their view. It’s like someone who drinks 14 beers and then gets into a car and then calls the carnage that follows “hyper-driving-under-the-influence”. Calvinism implies that God alone determines who goes to Heaven or Hell in a causal way. He is the sole actor in the question of who is saved. If anyone isn’t saved, it’s because he didn’t act. It’s his decision to not act that damns a person. This means that God does not love all people equally, on Calvinism.
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Oh I’m not mad at you. I don’t get mad in secondary-issues debates. The doctrine of soteriology is open to two interpretations: (open theism is not in any way an option) calvinism and molinism, so I think discussions like this can be profitable and even fun as long as no one slings mud (I’m not sure how profitable they are in formal public debates though).
I’m not sure your illustration is accurate. Say there are three guys (Bill, Dave, and Steve) hanging out at Taco Bell, sitting at the same table. Bill is sitting across from Dave, and Steve is sitting to the left of Bill. Bill slaps Dave in the face unexpectedly to Dave; Steve saw the whole thing and knew he could have stopped it. Did Steve’s passiveness *cause* Bill to slap Dave in the face? No not at all. He was passive. Consider this: Steve moves to stop Bill from slapping Dave in the face. Is that causation? Most certainly. Steve was the cause of Dave’s not being slapped in the face.
All people are sinners. God does not create or cause fresh evil in the hearts of men. God’s saving some and others is not *causing* others to go to hell. Mercy is undeserved. People go to hell based on their own sin not because God created the sin in their souls and then damns them for eternity based on sin He created in them.
We’ve broken His law, we’re in deep trouble; all of us. Those who are punished are punished justly because they are guilty. Some receive forgiveness, but not all. Why are some forgiven and not all? It’s a mystery, but those who are forgiven are not forgiven in an arbitrary or capricious manner
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But Bill could have refrained from slapping Dave in the face. It’s the ability to do other that gives moral responsibility. But on the Calvinist view, humans do not have the ability to do other than rebel against God. They cannot even respond to his drawing them to him. So they are not morally responsible. To be morally responsible, you have to have the ability to do other than what you do.
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But you are still eliding the fact that, under Calvinism (and Augustinianism generally), it is not human beings per se, but sinners that are damned, and the blame lies with them, not with God for not saving them. We are all in Adam, and so we would tend to think certain things to be, or not be, fair in this matter. Whether you bring in LFW or not, it still means people will go to hell on their own fault and choices. Unless Molinism can show that every single person has a fair shot at salvation, and in such a way that God has done his utmost to save them, then the problems are just the same, although the result is the same: damned for our own choices. And that is where this issue all comes from: Augustine faced the question why are some saved and some not, and answered it with predestination. We all face that question, and our doctrines are attempts to answer it to our satisfaction. For myself, too many of the answers make God the passive partner; hyper this or that makes him the over-active partner. One thing I know, we are all calvinists on our knees.
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@WK: There is moral freedom on reformed theology. I don’t know of any reformer who thinks a sinner can’t do morally good things in this life. Maybe there are some (I mainly listen to Sproul, Koukl, and the white horse inn guys), but I haven’t heard anything like that from the reformed camp. Now, it is true on reformed theology that a sinner cannot willfully on his own accept the gift of grace (I hope I worded that correctly). A person must be drawn by God then he or she can put faith/trust in the person and work of Christ for salvation.
I don’t think humans not having the ability to not rebel against God before salvation means you’re not morally responsible for the sin in your life. I don’t think that necessarily follows. We can perform good moral actions before salvation, but we cannot be saved apart from God’s drawing us to Him first.
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Stan, I don’t think so. Is it not the case that God chose the elect before the foundation of the world, for God’s own good pleasure and apart from anything they had done? If so, then before any human beings committed any acts of sin, God had already decided they would perish by not electing them.
It’s really hard to see how what a person does could influence where they ended up, unless you merely mean to say that if a person performs those acts God has ordained they would, namely obey the gospel, then they will be saved.
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I don’t agree with WLC that it was hyperbole. How can he say that? I think its pretty cut and dried what Jesus meant. Imagine if it weren’t true. That would make Jesus out to be either a liar or ignorant.
I really don’t agree with the whole Molinism thing. I see it as a complicated construct designed to avoid the uncomfortable reality that exists when confronted with the premises that 1)Jesus is the only way to salvation, and 2)A huge number of people have lived since Jesus came to Earth who never had a chance to learn about him.
And no one wants to believe that God is just going to fling billions of people into eternal hellfire who never had a chance to hear the gospel.
I think there are other ways to solve the problem without resorting to Molinism, which as far as I can tell has no scriptural support whatsoever and is pure speculation.
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Well there is Acts 17:27, so not NO scriptural support. And the Bible does show that God has knowledge of counterfactuals, and that humans are responsible. Responsibility is only possible if humans have freedom.
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Not just responsibility, but reason itself requires libertarian free will: http://messianicdrew.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-no-theist-should-be-compatibilist.html
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I agree with you, Drew.
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Thanks for the reference to Acts 17:27. I do see how that could be interpreted to support Molinism. However, it could just as easily be interpreted to mean that God has ordered the general flow of human history in order for humanity to have a Messiah and a plan for salvation. In any event, reading the entirety of Molinism into that one verse is a huge stretch.
I agree with you that humans have free will and are not simply determined to accept Jesus as their Savior as a hyper-Calvinist might say. I think that the Bible makes it abundantly clear that God does elect people people to salvation, however, and until this election happens a person is not capable to coming to God. Jesus said “no man can come to Me unless the Father draws him” in the gospel of John.
My personal theory to resolve the uncomfortable scenario I mentioned in my first message is that alot of things are going to happen in the 2nd resurrection that we just don’t know about. I don’t think God is simply going to hurl all of them into hell fire. Perhaps God will allow some of them to be saved based on how they responded to the light they had while they lived on Earth.
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then that would be based upon merit.
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To be honest with you I don’t really know whats going to happen in the 2nd resurrection. It doesn’t really make sense to me that its just going to be a mass judgement on the damned. The indication from various passages in scripture are that at least some of those resurrected in the 2nd resurrection will enter into life. (Keep in mind that all of the saints are resurrected in the 1st resurrection when Jesus returns to Earth).
All I can tell you is that I believe that what the Bible says.
1) There will be two resurrections, a resurrection of life and a resurrection of judgement. The resurrection of life occurs at the beginning of the Millenium and the resurrection of judgement occurs after the 1000 years are over.
2) The Bible makes it very clear that people can only respond to God’s grace after being drawn to Him by the Holy Spirit. For example in John 6:44.
3) I also believe that we all have free will on whether or not we will respond to God’s grace. I don’t believe that God forces Himself upon anyone. This is made abundantly clear throughout scripture, including in the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve had a clear choice on whether or not they wanted to submit to God.
4) Because of premise #3, it doesn’t seem right that God would force a newborn infant who died shortly after birth to choose Him instead of the path of sin. So it kind of makes sense that very young children who die before they are old enough to make a clear moral choice would be given this kind of opportunity in the 2nd resurrection.
5) In Ezekiel 37 we see a prophecy of dead Israelites coming to life and receiving the Holy Spirit (verse 14).
6) Jesus said that the only unpardonable sin was the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In Matthe 12:32 He said that those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, “either in this age OR IN THE AGE TO COME” implying that those who didn’t blaspheme against the Holy Spirit (which I think is willfully rejecting God after one has been drawn to Him through the Holy Spirit or accepting Christ as his Savior) could be forgiven in an age to come.
7) The Bible makes in clear in numerous places that God is only electing some (Romans 11:7-8). If this life is the only opportunity a person has to recieve God’s grace and forgiveness then this seems patently unfair to the unelected. But Paul goes on to explain that “…I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And in this way all Israel will be saved”
Draw what conclusions you will.
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Interestingly, in that article Craig only applies these “nasties” to Calvinists who are hard determinists. He affirms those Calvinists who confess “mystery” in reconciling the areas of divine sovereignty and human free will as “reasonable.” I would assume that would include those who don’t think Molinism does the job (and would applaud him for that). He seemed more uncharitable in a previous podcast on the subject.
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Oh yes, the mystery Calvinists are no problem.
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I’ve learned that many critics of Calvinism lump the hardcore determinists in with the calvinists, which is unfortunate (I mean even Bill Craig does it, why bill, why?) because the hardcore determinists are hyper-calvinists (something Calvin didn’t teach btw – I could be wrong though) and their theology is not at all what reformed theology teaches.
Here is an excerpt from my Kevin DeYoung’s work on hyper-cavlinism:
“2. Toon gives a solid definition of Hyper-Calvinism and it’s not the same as being really, really Reformed. In common parlance, Hyper-Calvinist simply means “I think you are too much of a Calvinist.” But that’s not a fair use of the term. Historically, Hyper-Calvinism has referred to a set of theological conclusions and practices, none of which mark any of today’s leading Calvinists.
Here’s Toon’s summary (with some paragraph breaks added):
[Hyper-Calvinism] was a system of theology, or a system of the doctrines of God, man and grace, which was framed to exalt and honour and glory of God and did so at the expense of minimising the moral and spiritual responsibility of sinners to God. It places excessive emphasis on the immanent acts of God–eternal justification, eternal adoption and the eternal covenant of grace. In practice, this meant that “Christ and Him crucified”, the central message of the apostles, was obscured.
It also often made no distinction between the secret and the revealed will of God, and tried to deduce the duty of men from what it taught concerning the secret, eternal decrees of God.
Excessive emphasis was also placed on the doctrine of irresistible grace with the tendency to state that an elect man is not only passive in regeneration but also in conversion as well. The absorbing interest in the eternal, immanent acts of God and in irresistible grace led to the notion that grace must only be offered to those for whom it was intended.
Finally, a valid assurance of salvation was seen as consisting in an inner feeling and conviction of being eternally elected by God. So Hyper-Calvinism led its adherents to hold that evangelism was not necessary and to place much emphasis on introspection in order to discover whether or not one was elect. (144-45)
So the main tenets include: little attention to message of the cross, no free offer of the gospel to call, no summons for men to be born again, a highly introspective doctrine of assurance, and collapse of the hidden and revealed will of God. This was Hyper-Calvinism, not simply being seriously Reformed.”
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The reformed doctrine is not of free will, but ‘free moral responsibility’. The doctrine of total depravity does not deny that we can perform morally acceptable actions, only that we can not savingly turn to God in Christ, because we are in willing bondage to sin. The doctrine of election consequent on this is that God chooses to save some of those who have accepted sin’s rule in their lives, otherwise none would be saved. Double predestination is not accepted through-out the reformed community, and even Calvin was fearful of it; but that comes from the logic of saying that the choice to perform a) for x) entails the choice to not perform a) for y).
Regeneration is the work of the Spirit removing the block, and directing the heart to Christ; it’s not a conditional work, it is the raison d’etre of his regenerating work.
However, the idea that it is purely arbirtrary on God’s part is a long running slur. We are not dealing with neutral people whom God happens to choose or not choose, but sinners against a holy God. God is holy, righteous and just; but predestination and election is a mystery that requires humility of mind and soul. Outwardly, it operates like a free will situation – hence Luke 10.13 etc, directed at people who should have known better – and only high calvinists tend to take it to its one sided logical extreme (ie, no gospel calls, no evangelism, etc) (Ex-high calvinist speaking)
Saying that, I’m a Barthian now, precisely because of incongruities even in mainstream confessional calvinism. However, I do think that modern Christianity has suffered from an over influence of enlightenment rationalism, including the idea of libertarian free will. Once you let that in the door you’re actually heading towards deism and/or pelagianism.
I can’t speak for molinism because God has not provided me with the opportunity to learn about it; he steered me to Barth instead ;)
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I am not sure that the question is a good one. It could be a problem for both. I have not heard of Molinism but I guess i would have more Molinisitic thoughts than Calvinistic.
Still, there is one thing which I think comes more from a Calvinistic camp. God is Sovereign. I personally believe that God has given us the free will to choose Him or reject him. Since he wants all men to be saved (I tim 2) one must assume that he is not going to condemn people in an ‘enie-menie-minie-moe’ type method.
As to the statement of Jesus, it could be hyperbole, an extra emphasis to show how blind they were. However, allowing for it to be a statement of fact, it does not mean that they did not see enough to be able to repent. As far as I know, Jonah didn’t do any miracles and yet Nineveh repented. What is under consideration may be as simple as “if I had gone to this cities, they would have repented”.
So why did Christ not go? The Scripture teaches He came in the fullness of time, So I must conclude that God has decided what is going to happen when. His plan was laid before the earth so what do I know? I am just a little clay….. He doesn’t seem to violate free will but I am not sure that they didn’t know what they should do anyway. Romans 1:18ff
Then, of course, we come to the fact that we can’t do anything about that past, we can only be concerned about our present. When we get to Heaven perhaps that mystery too will be revealed for now, the mystery of Christ is made known.
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Just to jump in on the hyperbole point: this seems clearly hyperbole since Jesus says in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus several chapters later (Lk. 16) that even if someone comes back from the dead, some simply will not believe—a fact that is borne out in Jesus’ own ministry elsewhere (e.g., Jesus’ resuscitation of Lazarus of Bethany [Jn. 11] provokes the Jewish leaders to kill both Jesus *and* the raised Lazarus [Jn. 12]).
On Calvinism, it seems clear that reprobation and election are symmetrical outcomes rooted in the divine will (not simply bypassing some and electing others). I cite Calvin, who was as good a Calvinist as any:
“If we cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just that it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will. When God is said to visit in mercy or harden whom he will, men are reminded that they are not to seek for any cause beyond his will” (Institutes 3.22.11).
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Wow! Thanks for the comment, Paul Copan! I appreciate your work very much!
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I don’t see how the story of Lazarus and the rich man indicates that the statement in Luke 10 was hyperbole. I don’t see how the two passages have anything to do with each other.
In fact, I think its even possible that Jesus was actually relating a real event, perhaps the Lazarus in the story was the actual Lazarus that He resurrected or would soon resurrect in the near future. Maybe He was even telling this story to highlight the Pharisees hard hearts.
If we can simply dismiss anything that we disagree with in scripture as “hyperbole” then that starts us down a slippery path and can be used to justify just about anything. For example, what’s to stop a Jehovah’s Witness from claiming that John 1:1 is hyperbole?
On the other hand, if a good percentage of everything Jesus stated in the gospels was hyperbole, it’s kind of hard to take Him seriously.
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Verse 23 says the same in referring to Sodom. I agree that this would seem to be a hyperbolic statement.
Otherwise, someone could rightly ask, “If God would have performed miracles for Sodom and thus the repentance of people would have followed – why didn’t God do that if He knew that more people could have come to genuine repentance?”
Jesus was using some of the most wicked people mentioned in the entire scriptures in comparison – to make a shocking point. We see Jesus using this shock and awe tactic all over the place (i.e. Cut off your hand if it causes you to sin, gouge your eyes out, etc.)
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The simple answer to your question is that God is obviously not in the business of electing everyone on Earth. Otherwise, then yes, He could simply perform miracles for everyone in order to convince everyone to convert.
After all, He appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, while Paul was traveling in order to persecute the church! Imagine if Jesus did that for everyone. Imagine if God miraculously appeared on stage during a debate between William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens and the whole world saw it, alot of atheists would immediately convert. We’d have a lot more Christians walking around!
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Election and reprobation are symmetrical inasmuch as God decrees both, rendering the outcome equally certain in each case.
However, they are asymmetrical in another respect. Election is unconditional inasmuch as God doesn’t take human merit (or foreseen faith) into account where election is concerned (since sinners have no merit, and faith is a resultant benefit of election).
By contrast, demerit is a necessary (but insufficient) condition of reprobation. So in that respect, reprobation is conditional in a way that election is not.
Let’s also keep in mind that Calvin was a theological pioneer. As such, later Reformed theologians refine his theology in various ways.
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I don’t think the verse is a problem for Molinists or Calvinists. A Molinist could say that God actualized a world in which the most number of people would choose salvation and that it happened to be a world in which Chorazin and Bethsaida did not repent. It maybe be the case that in some other possible world (a world in which miracles were performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida), they would have repented, but that would not have been a world in which a maximum number would’ve been saved.
A Calvinist could say that the reason God didn’t perform miracles in Chorazin and Bethsaida is because he had no intention of granting them repentance. After all, in Calvinism, God uses means to draw people (especially preaching and evangelism). He doesn’t merely flick a switch in their hearts.
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I haven’t seen a single Bible verse supporting Molinism that couldn’t be easily explained to support Reformed of even Arminian theology.
Do proponents of Molinism claim that 100.00% of those going to Hell from this real world would also have gone to Hell in every possible world?
If yes, then doesn’t that sound a lot like Reformed theology, where God created people knowing that they would go to Hell — regardless of whether the real creation maximized those going to Heaven?
If no, then didn’t God deliberately create a world where some go to Hell that wouldn’t have otherwise — i.e., God specifically created them knowing that they would go to Hell? Again, doesn’t that sound a lot like a part of Reformed theology that Molinists/Arminians don’t like?
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No we like that part. We are totally OK with that:
Look at this from Craig:
—-
Now, someone might object at this point that an all-loving God would not create people who he knows will be lost but who would have been saved if only they had heard the gospel. But how do we know that there are any such persons? It’s reasonable to assume that many people who never hear the gospel would not believe the gospel even if they did hear it. Suppose then that God has so providentially ordered the world that all persons who never hear the gospel are precisely such people. In that case, anybody who never hears the gospel and is lost is a person who would not have received the gospel and been saved even if he had heard it.
Thus no one can stand before God on the judgment day and say, “All right, God. So I didn’t respond to your general revelation in nature and conscience. But if only I’d heard the gospel, then I would have been saved.” God will say to them, “No. I knew that even if you had heard the gospel you would not have believed in it. Therefore my judgment of you on the basis of nature and conscience is neither unfair nor unloving.”
—-
Source:
http://www.gracevalley.org/sermon_trans/Special_Speakers/How_Can_Jesus_Be_Only_Way.html
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This goes along with what WK responded, but maybe you’re still wondering what a recent questioner asked Bill Craig. The questioner wrote, “Your Middle Knowledge response, as far as I can ascertain, is that God knew before he created these people that they would reject the Gospel, so he put them in second century Tibet where it didn’t matter anyway. No harm, no foul.” Craig’s response is a long one, much to long to clutter up space here, so I’ll excerpt a small portion and then give the link to read the full response.
“Now you ask, why create “Fred” in the first place? Here’s the real nub of the issue, I think, and why you find my hypothesis unattractive. You think God could have just left Fred out. But that’s not true, if my hypothesis is correct! There may be no world feasible for God involving universal, freely embraced salvation which comes without other overriding disadvantages. Sure, God could have refrained from creating Fred (or both Fred and Sophie), but then the resulting world might have been even worse or at least no better. The hypothesis is that God has done the very best He can, given the true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him.
Your claim that “there are an infinite number of beings God can create who would freely accept the Gospel without somebody else rejecting it” is guilty of the same error you alleged earlier, namely, speaking without a context. Suppose that for any possible person there may be circumstances under which he would be freely saved without someone’s being lost; it doesn’t follow that there is a feasible world in which every person would be freely saved without someone’s being lost. For the relevant circumstances may not be compossible. Your pun on Sophie’s Choice (a choice between two bad options) reveals that you haven’t yet grasped the theory of middle knowledge, for God doesn’t create such a choice for Himself. The counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which confront Him are outside His control. He has to play with the hand He has been dealt.
So I’m a good deal less confident than you are about our ability to pronounce on what worlds are feasible for God. Therefore, I’m not inclined to regard (3) as implausible. In any case, we both agree that it is possible, and that suffices for the purposes of the Free Will Defense.”
You can read the full response (I encourage everyone to) at this location: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9193
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