Here is the full text of the paper I presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Baltimore, on the topic of biblical inerrancy.
Inerrancy,
Is It a Matter of Luck?
An
Assessment of Inspiration, Providence and Divine Luck
on
Calvinism, Open Theism, Classical Arminianism, and Molinism.
Guillaume Bignon
ABSTRACT: The
doctrinal basis of the Evangelical Theological Society requires from its
members a strong, traditional, evangelical stand on inspiration and inerrancy.
While this does not explicitly mention free will and providence, it does have
consequences in terms of what one is able to believe with respect to the divine
feat of inspiring the scriptures through the free agency of human authors. If
God is to successfully bring about an inerrant, inspired text, what are His
prospects on any theologian’s view of free will and foreknowledge? The
consequences of human free will are surveyed on Calvinism, open theism,
classical Arminianism, and Molinism, to assess in each case what is secured by
God and what is left to chance. In this light, an assessment is offered of what
is and is not ultimately reasonable to believe with respect to God, providence,
and divine luck in the process of inscripturation. It is ultimately proposed
that inspiration and inerrancy are so improbable on open theism and classical
Arminianism as to be virtually impossible, and that even on Molinism both still
require some amount of divine luck, albeit a luck of a different kind. It is
concluded that only Calvinists and “Molinists who believe in a certain amount
of divine luck” can reasonably hold and treasure the view of the Evangelical
Theological Society that “the Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is
the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.”
“The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word
of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.” Thus declares the doctrinal
basis of the Evangelical Theological Society. It is the historic, traditional
Christian belief, that God has communicated to His creation a special
revelation of Himself and His plan of redemption, in the form of written,
plain, human language. To that effect, the doctrinal belief goes, God has
chosen to employ the free agency of various and diverse human writers, who
though they were writing of their own volition, under the prompting of the
Spirit ended up inscripturating the very words that God desired to communicate.
Considering this project, God faced the prospect of bringing
about that numerous human authors, at numerous times and in numerous places, would
freely choose to write just the words He would have them write. Assessing His
chances of pulling it off and the degree to which He eventually succeeded at
doing so, is largely a matter of understanding just what sort of free will
these authors possessed, and just what sort of things God knew, foreknew, and
possibly determined with respect to their free choices in writing.
Let us review the various positions, which theologians can
take and indeed have taken with respect to free will, providence and
inspiration.
On the one hand are Calvinists who affirm universal
theological determinism. They are
those in the reformed tradition who affirm with the Westminster Confession,
that
God, the great creator of all things doth uphold, direct,
dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even
to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible
foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the
praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.[1]
They believe that God
providentially determines all things—and hence all human choices—to accomplish
His good purposes; so naturally, they are determinists
with respect to human free will. They are also called compatibilists to describe their belief that this kind of divinely
determined free will is compatible
with the moral responsibility of human beings. Humans are determined in the
choices they make—ultimately by their creator God—but in the relevant sense, they
still make ‘their’ voluntary choices, and are indeed morally responsible for
them. Of course, non-Calvinists argue forcefully that these two beliefs are
incompatible, but arbitrating that debate is not the purpose of this paper.
On the Calvinist view, inspiration is rather straightforwardly
secured. The nature of human free will is believed to be compatible with its
being fully determined by God’s providential activity. God is in full sovereign
control of the circumstances and the desires of all humans, which a fortiori
includes the individuals whom He picked as authors of the scriptures, and hence
He can just providentially determine that they freely write just what words He
would have them write. Et voilà, the
Bible comes to be and is easily affirmed to be God’s authoritative word in
every way.[2]
On the other side of the theological divide however, under a
large tent we could call Arminianism,
theologians believe that true, morally responsible free will is incompatible
with determinism. Human beings are said to have a libertarian free will, a free will that is not determined by prior factors or causes inside or outside the
free agent, including God’s promptings in their hearts. It is sometimes
described as a categorical ability to
do otherwise: all things being just as they are at the moment of choice, and
God’s prompting being just the way it is, the agent is able to freely choose
otherwise than what he chooses. As Peter van Inwagen puts it, “whatever else it
may involve; to be able to have acted otherwise is to have free will.”[3]
But on the face of it, this may pose a problem for the
doctrine of inspiration. If free will is libertarian in this way, God cannot just go ahead and determine the
outcome of human free choices. If human free choices are libertarian, they are
by definition undetermined, and even
an omnipotent God can no more determine
an undetermined choice than He can
create a square circle or a married bachelor. Accordingly, short of determining
the free choices of biblical authors, what is God to do on each of the
non-Calvinist views?
It depends on which
sort of things an Arminian affirms that God foreknows and uses in His
providence over human free choices. On this matter, Arminians can take and
indeed have taken, one of three (and only three) views: 1-Open theism,
2-classical Arminianism (or simple
foreknowledge), and 3-Molinism. Space does not permit me to argue the
point, but I contend that these are the only
three options, as they cover all the logical possibilities open to Arminians in
terms of providence over libertarian free will. Let us review each of them in
turn.
Open Theists believe that God has knowledge of what we have
done in the past and are doing in the present, but inasmuch as a future choice is truly free in the
libertarian sense, open theists affirm that there is presently no such state of
affair as what humans will freely do,
and hence God doesn’t know what we will
do, only what we might or might not
do. About such choices, God does not have knowledge of certainties; He knows
only probabilities. So as God is endeavoring to guide the writing of Holy
Scripture, this knowledge of probabilities gives Him a possibly decent guess as to what sorts of promptings He
needs to operate on the hearts of these authors to maximize His chances to obtain the correct words, but
it gives God no guarantee that they will in fact respond in the way He intends,
and write these correct words. Because of libertarianism,
given just the sort of promptings God chooses to operate, in just the right
circumstances, it is still possible for the authors to freely choose otherwise
than God hopes, and because of open
theism, God does not know whether or not they will. That is wholly outside
of His control by good and necessary consequences of what open theists affirm.
As should be evident already, this has rather deleterious
consequences for one’s view of inspiration and accordingly inerrancy. Given
that there is no course of action that God can take of His own to carry out the
successful writing of His word, we must conclude one of two things: either He
failed and scripture is at least uninspired in places if not in outright error,
or, He succeeded in every way and inspiration amounts to an incredible stroke
of luck. How much luck exactly? It is hard to put credible figures on the
question, but the sheer number of words in the entire Bible—Old and New
Testaments—should be enough to convince that this kind of divine luck is
implausibly believed, bordering on virtual impossibility.
On the one hand, some libertarians are fine with this
conclusion. This is the view held by open theists David and Randall Basinger,
who contend that it is incoherent to affirm full inspiration and at the same
time to use the free will defense against the problem of evil—another way of
simply saying that human free will is libertarian.[4]
They maintain that full inspiration conflicts with libertarianism, and since
libertarianism is a solid fact, so much the worse for inspiration, inerrancy,
and the doctrinal basis of the E.T.S.
On the other hand, open theist Greg Boyd does uphold his
belief in inerrancy: “the Bible is always true—and I, for one, assume that it
is.”[5]
The credo is pleasantly orthodox, but open theism seems to remove the resources
necessary to explain how it possibly came to be. So before we go on to assess inspiration
on the classical Arminian and Molinist views, let us address a handful of alternative
responses that libertarians have suggested or could suggest to avoid the
problem.
First, some libertarians have attempted to qualify what biblical
inspiration and inerrancy require, in more modest terms that are compatible
with a less than comprehensive divine oversight of the free human authors. Bruce
Reichenbach suggests:
The doctrine of inspiration can be understood in terms of God’s
revelation to writers whom he moved to write. As such, in many cases God’s
revealing activity and controlling of the outcome is in terms of necessary and
not sufficient conditions. It need not be thought to extend to the words used
or style employed, but rather to the truths presented.[6]
The problem with this view is that human free will makes no
distinction between the style of a written text and the truth-status of its
contained meaning. As long as free will permits humans to choose their words, no distinction can coherently be
made between God’s control of their style and His control of their
truth-content. The same words that exhibit a writing style also carry a
communicated message, and if God cannot control “the words used or style
employed,” He can no more control the “truths presented” by those very words. Therefore
the traditional doctrine of inspiration as affirmed by our credo, which
requires the Bible alone and the Bible in
its entirety to be God’s word, rules out such a response.
Another suggestion would be that God ‘normally’ equips human
beings with a libertarian free will, but that in cases where He wants or needs
to guarantee the outcome of a free choice, He simply removes that freedom from
His human agents, to secure deterministically that they do what He would have
them do. This can be seen in Roger Olson: “Occasionally God suspends free will
with a dramatic intervention that virtually forces a person to decide or act in
some way”[7]
or Jack Cottrell who grants that God does not intervene in human free decisions
“unless his special purposes require
it”[8]
and Jason Nicholls who writes that “Scripture also records select incidents of
divine determinism whereby God guarantees the fulfillment of specific,
indispensable pieces of his ultimate plan.”[9]
Inspiration could then be such a case, and God could have
inspired the scriptures by way of securely determinist, compatibilist human
choices, in the way that Calvinists assert He did. This might even be Greg
Boyd’s position, since He has gone on record to say that the impeccable saints
in Heaven, and even Jesus on earth possessed a compatibilist free will to
guarantee that they cannot sin.[10]
The problem with this response is twofold. First, it makes
an unjustified distinction between the free choices made by biblical
authors—now said to be determinist—and any other human free choice alleged to
be libertarian. But nothing in the metaphysical fabric of a biblical author’s
free choice has justifiably been altered; nothing in the mechanism of his will
leading to his free choice of words has presumably been changed from say the
free choice to believe Christ or to get out of bed in the morning. The choice
of writing the scripture is just as free as any other free choice. On the
orthodox view of inspiration presently discussed, God does not dictate the
words; He does not coerce the authors; He does not hypnotize them; He simply
prepares writers-to-be by His providence, and prompts their hearts by His
Spirit in such a way that they freely
write the right words. So if free will is libertarian as open theists say it
is, and if human authors wrote the scripture of their own free will the way our
credo says they did, then it follows that inscripturation involved libertarian
free will; not compatibilist. So this response will not do.[11]
The second reason why a determinist compatibilist
inspiration of scripture is problematic on any Arminian view is that it leaves
us wondering what happened to all the anti-Calvinist arguments proposed abundantly
in the literature against compatibilist free will. We are normally told that it
turns human beings into robots,[12]
“smoothly operated puppet[s],”[13]
“a marionette show,”[14]
of “contracted performers,”[15]
“falling dominos,”[16]
“dancing mannequins,”[17]
ventriloquist dummies,[18]
“men are God’s toys,”[19]
“pawns in God’s hands,”[20]
or that they cannot be morally responsible,[21]
that it turns history into a “farce,”[22] a
“vain and empty spectacle,”[23] a
“charade,”[24]
and so on.
If libertarians maintain any of those problematic arguments,
they cannot turn around and affirm just this kind of determined will for the
beautifully inspired free act of writing the word of God. None of the colorful
names above applies to the biblical authors, whose writing cannot be thus
controlled if any brand of Arminianism is true.
A final libertarian retort finds itself refuted by the same
consideration. It is the suggestion that God might be able to control and
secure the outcome of the wills of His saints,
just not those of unbelieving sinners. God would have a special access to
determine the more malleable wills of His redeemed servants (among whom
biblical authors presumably are); an access that He otherwise lacks for
unbelievers who freely reject Him. Leaving aside the question of whether Solomon
was apostate when He penned some of his proverbs or whether the author of Ecclesiastes
was a believer, the same response as above must be given here: for all the willingness
and submissiveness that a believer undoubtedly brings to the table, the metaphysics
of his free will with respect to
determinism have no reason to be different from that of an unbeliever.
Sinners who repent become servants, but they do not become puppets or robots,
nor any of the injurious labels listed above. Therefore, if true, morally
significant free will is libertarian, it remains so after conversion, and a
determinist compatibilist inspiration of scripture is excluded.
Since none of these responses can get libertarians—or at
least so far open theists—off the hook of the present problem, let us now turn
to the remaining two Arminian understandings of providence, starting with
classical Arminianism, or simple-foreknowledge
Arminianism.
The classical Arminian view distinguishes itself from open
theism by adding that God possesses simple
foreknowledge of the future. He knows in advance all of the free choices
that creatures will make in the
future. Free will is still undetermined,
it is still libertarian, but contrary
to open theism, God is not left in the dark as to how those free will choices
will turn out; He knows perfectly well what we will freely choose; He foreknows everything that the future holds.
The question is then raised: what sort of providential advantage does it add to
the picture? What sort of additional help does this provide God as He endeavors
to inspire the Bible?
Like all interesting questions of metaphysics, this matter
is not entirely uncontroversial, but let me argue here that at least minimally with respect to inspiration, simple
foreknowledge is providentially useless, leaving the God of classical
Arminianism in the same quandary as that of the God of open theism. Classical
Arminian Jack Cottrell thinks that foreknowledge helps, because divine
foreknowledge of free will choices “gives God the genuine option of either permitting
or preventing men’s planned choices, and prevention is the ultimate control.”[25]
He writes,
God permits men and women to carry out their plans . . . or else
he intervenes and prevents them. . . . What enables God to monitor people’s
plans and include such permission in his eternal decree? The answer is his
foreknowledge. . . . This is how God maintains sovereign control over the whole
of his creation, despite the freedom he has given his creatures.[26]
But this will not work. Since what God foreknows in His
simple foreknowledge is actually the truth about the future—it truly is what will happen—, at the point when He knows these things, He can no
longer prevent any of it from happening, or it would not be true foreknowledge of the future after
all, which is absurd per hypothesis. John Sanders explains this problem with
clarity,
Once God has foreknowledge, he cannot change what will happen,
for that would make his foreknowledge incorrect; and foreknowledge, by
definition, is always correct about what is going to occur. God cannot make
future actual events “deoccur.” It is a logical contradiction to affirm that
God both knows something will happen and that God knows he will bring it about
that it not happen. Once God knows something as actual, he cannot make it the
case that it not be actual.[27]
Classical Arminians however, do not surrender that debate
just yet. David Hunt has argued that even though it is indeed impossible for
God to use His foreknowledge of a free choice in order to change that same choice, it may be possible for God to use His foreknowledge of a
free choice in order to act providentially over some other events.[28]
For example, Hunt envisions a fictional game of rock, paper, scissors between
God and Satan. Once God foreknows the free choice of Satan, He no longer can
work to change Satan’s choice, but He may choose His own option providentially
in order to infallibly defeat Satan. Or again, in a less fictional situation,
once God foreknows that Peter will in fact freely deny Christ three times, He
no longer can prevent this denial from happening, but He can announce it in
biblical prophecy (which He could not infallibly do on open theism).
William Hasker has offered a strong case for why even those
more modest claims probably do not work with simple foreknowledge,[29]
but we do not even need to arbitrate the rather technical debate that ensued,
because it is irrelevant to the present argument. Indeed, even if we granted
that simple foreknowledge does confer to God this slight providential
superiority over the God of open theism, it still would remain worthless with respect to securing the outcome of
human free choices, which is the kind of providence that is needed for
biblical inspiration. Even if a God with simple foreknowledge were able to
prophetically announce the future or infallibly win a game of rock, paper,
scissor, He could not do anything to secure the outcome of human free choices
themselves. If He foreknows the choice
then He can no longer change it, and if He foreknows anything but the choice, then it is worthless to
secure a libertarian free choice
which by definition could still go either direction regardless of God’s best
efforts, no matter how knowledgeable God may be.
The conclusion follows that the God of classical
Arminianism, empowered with simple foreknowledge, is just as helpless and
dependent on luck as the God of open theism when it comes to bringing about
that the Bible contain the exact words that He would like it to communicate.
The final Arminian view to assess with respect to
inspiration is Molinism.
Molinists believe that God’s providential control of human
free choices rests most importantly upon His so-called middle knowledge, that is, the knowledge of so-called counterfactuals of freedom. Those
foreknown counterfactual propositions declare what any possible creature would freely do in any possible set of
circumstances.
On this view, God still does not determine the outcome of free choices; they remain libertarian, but
before He decides what He is going to do to influence human beings, God knows
what humans would freely do in
response to His promptings in any circumstances, in any envisaged scenario. He
therefore has the luxury of using this knowledge to decide which circumstances
in fact to bring about, and hence which free will choices will accordingly be
made. This is how Molinism is said to rescue divine providence in the face of
libertarian free will.
The providential advantage that this view—if coherent and
true[30]—would
afford God is I think substantial; it reduces the amount of luck that would be
necessary for God to obtain just the scriptures He wanted or something close to
it. Why is that so? It is because the limitation placed on God in virtue of
human free will being libertarian is no longer such that God cannot do anything
about it. Prior to creation, He is presented in His middle knowledge with all
the counterfactuals of freedom, which restrict His options of which free
choices He could bring about, but they do so at a point where He still has the choice
of rejecting envisaged scenarios that prohibitively displease Him. Out of all
the possible worlds there are, the rebellious libertarian free wills of human
beings ‘filter out’ a good many worlds that are said to be not ‘feasible’ for
God because the wrong counterfactuals of freedom happen to be true, and so if
God were to place humans in just those circumstances, they simply wouldn’t do
what He wants them to do. So not all possible worlds are feasible for God, but
He still gets to pick which one among the feasible worlds He does bring about
and make actual. Thus, with respect to inspiration, what it means is that God
has absolutely no guarantee that the counterfactuals of freedom, which stand
wholly outside of His control, will permit Him to inspire exactly the Bible
that He wanted as His first choice. But once in possession of middle-knowledge,
He can look at all the ‘feasible’ worlds, and pick the best world among those, a world in which the writers of holy scripture may not have
produced the absolute best Bible God would have wanted, but rather maybe a
pretty decent one nonetheless. It may possibly not be God’s favorite Bible, but
even in that case, there is a chance that God’s second best, the best one feasible to Him would still at least be
inerrant, and hopefully not too far off from the way God would ideally have
worded these truths.
So contrary to what some enthusiastic Molinists may have
claimed,[31]
we can see that this view still requires some degree of divine luck, insofar as
if God is to inspire exactly the words that He wants, the counterfactuals of
freedom of biblical authors would need to fall by chance alone in such a way that
they still permit access to a decent feasible world. And if free will is
libertarian, this part is entirely dependent on luck, since God does not
control (as He doesn’t determine) what humans would freely do in any
circumstances. The truth-value of those so-called counterfactuals of freedom is
wholly outside of His control; as William Lane Craig puts it, these are just
cards He is given, and God must “play with the hand He has been dealt.”[32]
God does not get to pick which cards He is dealt, and hence
whether this hand is playable at all rests purely on luck. But if we do suppose
that the hand of counterfactuals God has been dealt by chance is not too bad;
that it is still ‘playable’ if you will, then He can still play it perfectly. He
can knowingly ensure that the biblical authors do what He knew they would do under just the right
influences, and hence He can ensure that the best feasible Bible will come to
be. This is the Molinist view of providence, and its account of inspiration.
Having reviewed the consequences of each view of free will
and foreknowledge on one’s doctrine of inspiration, it is time to conclude on
what is or is not reasonable to believe. Allow me to do so with a fitting
parable.
There once was a good man who went out to submit a novel to three
wicked editors. He had worked so hard that his manuscript was absolutely
perfect in every way, and he submitted it for review by the three evil editors.
All three editors looked at the manuscript, and as editors do, made all sorts
of changes everywhere; changes which were all for the worse, since the
manuscript was perfect, after all. The first evil editor came back to the
writer and presented him dozens and dozens of revised versions, dozens of modified
manuscripts, and asked him to pick his favorite among those; the author was
disappointed, but picked the one that was least damaged, and it went to the
press.
The second evil editor came back to the author with only one
modified manuscript, and told him “you can read it before it lands on the
shelves, but it is already sent to the press, this is the one we are going
with.”
And the third evil editor just went ahead and picked a
modified manuscript, and sent it to the press without even telling the author
what version it would be.
“Now he who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
The correspondence with my previous analysis should be clear
enough: the writer is God, the perfect manuscript is the perfect, best possible
Bible that He would like to inspire, and the three evil editors represent the
kind of hurdles that God faces on the three libertarian views. The first one is
the Molinist view, wherein the best possible Bible may no longer be feasible,
but God still gets to pick among a set of lesser feasible ones before it “goes
to the press.” The second editor represents the classical Arminian view,
wherein God has no providential control over which manuscript gets picked, but
He is informed in advance of what it will be before it comes to be. And the
third editor represents open theism wherein God does not even know what will
come about before the ‘book is on the shelves.’
This story illustrates well the sort of luck needed on each
view: in the Molinist case, our author needs to hope that one of the feasible
manuscripts handed back to him will be decent enough that he can give his a-posteriori
consent even though it may not be the very best possible manuscript he wanted.
And in the case of classical Arminianism and open theism, we see that the decision
of which text is printed stands wholly outside of his control, and
additionally, we see explicitly how having simple foreknowledge provides God no
providential advantage, since in both cases the manuscript is chosen for Him,
whether or not He gets to read it before it lands on the shelf. Which one goes
to the press rests on divine luck.
In conclusion, what does all of this entail with respect to
inspiration, inerrancy and the credo of the Evangelical Theological Society?
Which views can coherently affirm inspiration in the way E.T.S. requires? It
depends on which amount of sheer divine luck one is prepared to believe in. How
lucky do you believe God ended up being? It is of course very hard to put any
credibly precise figures on the probability judgments involved, but the above
story together with the truly massive scope of scripture, should convince that
a solid view of inspiration is so improbable on open theism and classical
Arminianism as to be virtually impossible. That God would get the right words
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times by chance alone just stretches
one’s credulity. At some point a gambler must run out of luck, and pure chance has
to fail; it always does. Open theists and classical Arminians have no resources
to justify such insolent divine luck.
As to Molinism, the question remains: just how many possible
worlds—and accordingly how many possible Bibles—turned out by chance (or lack
thereof) to be unfeasible? How inflexible did the counterfactuals of freedom of
the biblical authors turn out to be? How likely is it that God’s options were
not too limited for a properly inspired Bible? I cannot say. I find it hard to
reconcile the God revealed in scripture with the idea that He would need any amount of blind dumb luck in His
dealings with the world,[33]
but without a strong argument for why that lucky draw was too improbable, I
must moderate my philosophical critique and simply conclude that while open
theism and classical Arminianism make it virtually impossible to believe in
inspiration, Molinism only makes it “dependent on a certain amount of luck that
we can only measure with great difficulty.” I thus conclude that a proponent of
inspiration as defined by the E.T.S., if he is to remain coherent[34],
should either be a Calvinist, or a Molinist who believes in some divine luck.[35]
[1] Westminster Confession of
Faith, chapter 5, “On Divine Providence” quoted in Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of
Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), 97-98.
[2]
Considering that on Calvinism, all
writings of all humans are thus
determined, one could wonder “are then not all
writings inspired by God?” But this question confuses necessity and
sufficiency. The full providential control of the author’s writing is necessary for a text to be the word of
God, but certainly it is not sufficient.
Something else beyond divine control is needed, namely God’s willing
endorsement of the text as His own word, a criterion that is clearly absent
from any non-inspired text, and all the more from any errant one, be they
determined by God for the role they have to play in His providence.
[3]
Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 162.
[4]
“One cannot consistently affirm the total inerrancy of Scripture and yet also utilize the Free Will Defence as a
response to the problem of evil.” David Basinger and Randall Basinger,
“Inerrancy and Free Will: Some Further Thoughts,” Evangelical Quarterly 58 (1986), 351 quoted in Stephen J. Wellum,
“The Inerrancy of Scripture” in Beyond
the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed.
John Piper, Justin Taylor & Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway
Books, 2003), 259.
[5]
Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A
Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Books, 2000), 11.
[6]
Bruce Reichenbach, “Bruce Reichenbach’s response (to John Feinberg)” in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views
of Divine Sovereignty & Human Freedom (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1986), 54.
[7]
Roger E. Olson, “The Classical Free Will Theist Model of God” in Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views
(Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2008), 151.
[8]
Jack W. Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man,
ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1995), 108.
[9]
Jason A. Nicholls, “Openness and Inerrancy: Can They be Compatible?” JETS 45/4 (December 2002), 631.
[10]
“the purpose of libertarian freedom is provisional, intended eventually to lead
us to a much greater, eternally solidified form of compatibilistic freedom.”
Gregory A. Boyd, “God Limits His Control” in Four Views on Divine Providence, ed. Stanley N. Gundry, Dennis W.
Jowers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 194.
[11] Let
me of course note that this is not at all a claim that compatibilist free will
cannot in fact be the medium of inspiration. For Calvinists, it is perfectly
fine to affirm just that, because they also maintain that a determinist
compatibilist will is precisely what free will happens to be. So on Calvinism,
a determinist compatibilist writing of the scriptures is a free writing of the scriptures, and this is just what our doctrine
of inspiration demands.
[12]
John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A
Theology of Divine Providence, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2007), 227.
[13]
F. Leroy Forlines, J. Matthew Pinson ed., Classical
Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation (Nashville, TN: Randall House
Publications, 2011), 48.
[14]
Clark H. Pinnock, “There is Room For Us: A Reply to Bruce Ware” JETS 45/2 (June 2002), 215.
[15] Sanders,
God Who Risks, 223.
[16]
J.P. Moreland & William Lane Craig, Philosophical
Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 2003), 273.
[17]
Sanders, God Who Risks, 223.
[18]
Ibid., 227.
[19]
William G. MacDonald, “. . . The Spirit of Grace” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 1999), 81.
[20]
Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths
and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 65.
[21] Alvin
Plantinga asks: “How can I be responsible for my actions, if it was never
within my power to perform any actions I didn’t in fact perform, and never
within my power to refrain from performing any I did perform?” Alvin Plantinga,
“Advice to Christian Philosophers,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the
Society of Christian Philosophers vol.1:3, (253-271).
David
Widerker: “An agent is morally blameworthy for performing a given act A only if
he could have avoided performing it.” David Widerker, ‘Blameworthiness
and Frankfurt’s Argument Against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities’ in
Moral Responsibility, ed. Widerker
& McKenna, 54.
Roger Olson: “If people’s decisions and actions are
determined by anything such that they could not do otherwise than they do,
wherein lies their moral accountability or guilt?” Roger E. Olson, “Responses
to Bruce A. Ware” in Perspectives on the
Doctrine of God: 4 Views (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers,
2008), 134.
Robert
Picirilli: “If, in fact, those who crucified Jesus had to do so, if God’s foreordination by its own efficacy made
their actions unavoidable, then they were not free to do otherwise—could not do otherwise—and were
therefore not responsible.” Robert E. Picirilli, Grace, Faith, Free Will: Contrasting Views of Salvation: Calvinism and
Arminianism (Nashville, TN: Randall House Publications, 2002), 80.
[22]
William Lane Craig, “Response to Paul Kjoss Helseth” in Four Views on Divine Providence, ed. Stanley N. Gundry, Dennis W.
Jowers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 62.
[23]
Ibid.
[24]
Ibid.
[25]
Jack W. Cottrell, “The Classical Arminian View of Election” in Perspectives on Election: Five Views,
ed. Chad Owen Brand (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006),
103.
[26]
Jack W. Cottrell, “The Nature of the Divine Sovereignty,” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man,
ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1995), 110-11.
[27]
John Sanders, “Responses to Roger E. Olson” in Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views (Nashville, TN:
Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2008), 186-87.
[28]
David P. Hunt, “The Providential Advantage of Divine Foreknowledge,” in Kevin
Timpe, ed., Arguing About Religion
(London and New York; Routledge, 2009), 374-85.
[29]
William Hasker, “Why Simple Foreknowledge is Still Useless (In Spite of David
Hunt and Alex Pruss)” Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society, September 2009.
[30] Some
have argued that if free will is libertarian, then there logically cannot be
such a thing as what a person would
freely do in a given situation in abstraction. As William Hasker puts it,
“insofar as an agent is genuinely free, there are no true counterfactuals stating what the agent would definitely
do under various possible circumstances.”[30]
This may or may not be true, but this controversial contention is not the
purpose of the present paper, so let us instead suppose that Molinism is in
fact coherent, and only consider what follows for inspiration assuming that
this view holds together.
[31] Cf.
Steven B. Cowan, “Molinism, Meticulous Providence, and Luck” in Philosophia Christi, vol.11, Number 1, 2009,
156.
[32]
William Lane Craig, “Molinism and the soteriological Problem of Evil Once
More,” http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-and-the-soteriological-problem-of-evil-once-more
[33]
The God of scripture “works all things
according to his will” (Eph. 1:11), and makes every decision for how the lot is
cast into the lap (Prv. 16:33) or where sparrows fall to the ground (Mat.
10:29-30). He can do all things and no purpose of His can be thwarted (Job
42:2).
“Putting everything in subjection to Him, He left nothing
outside His control” (Heb.2:8).
[34] This qualification is important, as
this paper is not intended to dictate to the E.T.S. who should or should not be
banned from membership. This is surely not for me to say. On some level,
furthermore, we all want to make room for inconsistent beliefs, or else no one
would be allowed in. Rather, my more modest aim was simply to show that
classical Arminians and open theists would be inconsistent in holding the E.T.S. doctrinal basis. That is the
only conclusion my present arguments have here established.
[35]
This conclusion is interesting in the light of the debate once sparked over
whether open theists belong in the E.T.S. Bruce Ware had forcefully argued that
they did not, and presented their diminished view of providence as a strong
reason why. To this, John Sanders responded that if Ware’s critique were true,
then it would exclude all non-Calvinists from the E.T.S, not just open theists.
The present paper establishes that this is not so. The doctrinal basis of the
E.T.S. may possibly reasonably be affirmed by a non-Calvinist, but to do so, it
seems to me that he must be a Molinist.
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