Freedom, Redemption and Communion: Studies in Christian Doctrine

Oliver D. Crisp

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567698360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

Oliver D. Crisp studies the topics of human freedom, redemption and communion with one another and God, which are central themes in Christian theology. The chapters of this volume are arranged according to how they would appear in a traditional dogmatics: dealing with issues concerning human free will and sin, studies on the person of Christ in recent theology, and human redemption. The book ends with pieces examining two important issues in Christian practice, namely, the Eucharist and prayer. Deeply engaged with the Christian tradition, and exemplifying a generous orthodoxy, this work makes a constructive theological case for the vitality and importance of Reformed theology today.

PART ONE

Freedom and Sin

1

Providence and Libertarian Calvinism

It is commonly assumed that Calvinism implies some version of theological determinism – usually some version of ‘soft’ determinism or compatibilism, according to which human free will is consistent with divine ordination.¹ However, this picture of Calvinism has recently been contested by a number of historical theologians, who have argued that historic Reformed theology does not imply or entail determinism, and may even be consistent with something like a version of libertarianism.² In previous work in this area I have argued that the Reformed confessions are metaphysically underdetermined, and consistent with a broader range of views than those that fall under the description of theological compatibilism. Specifically, the claim in this earlier work is that confessional Calvinism is commensurate with a kind of ‘mixed’ or ‘complex’ understanding of human free will and moral responsibility, which assumes that incompatibilism is true; that a ‘hard’ version of theological determinism applies to certain actions that pertain to ensuring human salvation; and that a version of source libertarianism applies to some mundane human actions that fall outside the scope of the divine action of ensuring human salvation. This view I have characterized as libertarian Calvinism.³

This chapter follows on from this previous work. One worry about libertarian Calvinism that has recently been raised in the literature is that it seems inconsistent with a Reformed understanding of meticulous providence because it affirms that human agents are the ultimate source of their free choices.⁴ However, accounts of divine concurrence often associated with Thomism are commonly thought to affirm both meticulous providence and libertarian creaturely freedom. I will argue that if concurrence accounts are consistent with meticulous providence, then something similar should be true of libertarian Calvinism, since both views share relevantly similar views about the relation between providence and human agency. This should not be all that surprising given that a number of historic Reformed thinkers thought of their own work in continuity with much of Thomism, and their views of providence as Protestant versions of something like a concurrence doctrine.

The argument proceeds as follows. In the first section I shall set out some important terminological distinctions. With these in hand, I shall turn in the second section to give a brief account of libertarian Calvinism. In the third section I deal with the problem for libertarian Calvinism raised by the question of the source of human free choices, which I call the sourcehood problem. Then, in the fourth section, I shall argue that there are structural similarities between libertarian Calvinism and concurrence accounts of meticulous providence. If concurrence accounts can allow for libertarian creaturely actions in a world governed by meticulous providence, then (so it seems to me) libertarian Calvinism can as well. I conclude with a brief section on the theological upshot of this argument. As with my previous work in this area, the aim throughout is to explore and defend aspects of libertarian Calvinism, even though I am not committed to libertarian Calvinism, in order to test the extent to which it is a defensible form of Reformed theology.

Preliminary Conceptual Distinctions

Let us begin with the notion of meticulous providence. This is the view according to which the scope of divine preservation, concurrence and governance in creation encompasses all that comes to pass. Preservation, concurrence and governance are the three traditional dogmatic heads under which providence is usually discussed. They are not necessarily distinct divine actions, but more like different modes of the one divine act, or different aspects of the one action of divine providence. God is said to preserve the world he has created in existence by the immediate exercise of his power. For defenders of meticulous providence, without such an act of divine preservation the creation would immediately cease to exist. God also acts in concurrence or in ‘agreement’ with creaturely actions, without which no creaturely action would take place. So God’s providence is necessary in order for creatures to act as well as continue to exist. And God governs his creatures by means of his constant oversight of the creation, ordering all things to the goal or consummation for which he has ordained the created order in the first place. Thus, there is nothing that obtains in creation without God’s preservation of, concurrence with and government respecting that thing. Absent God’s preservation of, concurrence with and government respecting that thing at each moment of its existence, it would not exist. In this way, according to the doctrine of meticulous providence, all that exists in creation is in some important sense radically dependent on God’s preservation, concurrence and government. The idea is similar to the way in which a person’s thoughts are radical ly dependent upon their continuing to think those things in order for the thoughts in question to continue to exist.

Now, meticulous providence so understood is often thought to be equivalent to determinism. I take it that determinism is, in the words of Peter van Inwagen, ‘the thesis that the past determines a unique future’.⁵ That is, the past determines exactly one future physical state of affairs. Put a bit more expansively, suppose that the past up to midday yesterday is summarized in the proposition P. To this, add a complete account of the laws of nature, summarized in the proposition L. Determinism is the view according to which the conjunction of P plus L entails a unique future state of affairs. In other words, P + L entails that you are reading this sentence right now rather than, say, basking in the sunshine on Manhattan Beach, or skiing at Big Bear, or whatever.⁶

Of course, there are different sorts of determinism. Usually, when analytic philosophers talk about determinism, they are interested in physical or causal determinism (I shall use these two terms interchangeably since I presume that causation is a relation that obtains between physical things). Philosophers are interested in the way in which one thing may causally affect another in the physical universe in which we live. So causal determinism is the thesis that a particular event, y, is causally necessitated by x; if x is some acting thing or some event, such that, given x, the unique event y must happen, because x makes it happen.⁷

By contrast, theologians like to talk about theological determinism. This is not the same thesis as causal determinism because the idea is that God, an immaterial agent, determines a unique future for the created order. This includes the physical creation, but does not comprise it. For presumably there are many things that are not physical in the created order, such as angels and demons, yet, on the theological determinist view God is said to determine their actions as well. What is more, some theological determinists seem to think that God’s meticulous oversight of the creation, which involves his ordaining all that comes to pass, does not involve him physically or causally bringing things about in the world. His action is logically prior to physical causation, and is sometimes said to be what informs or gives rise to, such physical causation.⁸

Be that as it may, one clear difference between theological determinism and causal determinism is that according to theological determinism it is God that determines what comes to pass, whereas on causal determinism the idea is that physical events in the past plus the laws of nature determine a unique future physical state of affairs. Perhaps God utilizes physical events to bring about a unique future physical state of affairs. If that is right, then at least some versions of theological determinism imply some version of physical or causal determinism. Nevertheless, the two theses are conceptually distinct.

With this in mind, let us turn next to compatibilism and incompatibilism and how they bear upon meticulous providence. In this context, compatibilism is the thesis that determinism is compatible with human free will and moral responsibility. Notice that I use the term ‘determinism’ without qualification in the previous sentence. This is because the idea here is that whatever sort of determinism is in view, the issue is whether that form of determinism (whether causal, theological or whatever) is consistent with human free will and moral responsibility. We might also worry about the free will and moral responsibility of other non-human creatures such as angels and primates. But we need not trouble ourselves with such complications here. It is sufficient for our purposes to focus on the free will and moral responsibility of human creatures irrespective of whether there are other rational creatures that also have free will and moral responsibility.

If compatibilism is the thesis that determinism is compatible with human free will and moral responsibility, incompatibilism is the thesis that determinism is incompatible with human free will and moral responsibility. Either determinism is true or human free will and moral responsibility is true, but not both.

Next, let me say something about libertarianism, since this will be important for the concurrence account. There are various ways of construing libertarianism. I will put it like this. Libertarianism is the view according to which incompatibilism is true, and determinism is false. That is, libertarianism states that determinism and the combination of human free will plus moral responsibility are not compossible, and, in addition, that determinism is false. To this we should add a claim about the fact that libertarians think that at least some human agents possess free choices on at least some occasions, so as to make clear that libertarian views give some conceptual content to the notion of free will, a matter to which we shall return in due course. Some people think that libertarianism also requires commitmen t to some form of the principle of alternative possibilities, according to which a person has free will only if she or he could have done otherwise.⁹ But it is not clear to me that this is a requirement for libertarianism, though it is a common feature of much contemporary libertarianism. It seems to me that the following claims could all be true:

1. Incompatibilism

2. The denial of determinism

3. Agents are the source of actions that are free and

4. Those actions that are free actions are actions for which humans are morally responsible

In this respect, I am understanding free will as a kind of control condition, that is, some control upon action in virtue of which human agents are held morally responsible.¹⁰ It could be argued that although these four claims are consistent, each being a necessary condition for libertarianism, they are not sufficient. For, so it might be thought, one must add to this the principle of alternative possibilities in order to have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for libertarianism. But perhaps not.

Consider, for example, the case of Anselm of Canterbury.¹¹ His view seems to be that human free will requires something like the four conditions stated earlier. But he also thinks that the truly free person is one who measures up to the standard set by God – to that rightness or rectitude of will (rectitudio) that involves acting in accordance with God’s will. The truly free person, on Anselm’s view, seems to be one who acts rightly, according to the rectitude of will for its own sake not as a means to some other end, so that the truly free agent rightly desires what she ought to desire.¹² Such a person is the source of her or his action, not God. Nevertheless, it is not obvious that such a position requires a principle of alternative possibilities or some similar idea of metaphysical wiggle room or leeway, in order for the action in question to be free and one for which the creature is morally responsible.¹³ The alternative to such rectitude, for the Anselmian, is the dereliction of one’s moral duty to follow divine commands. That, far from being an alternative that is enjoyed by the truly free individual, is only a ‘choice’ in the Pickwickian sense of being the privation of some good state that ought to obtain. The truly free person, for the Anselmian, is the source of his or her choice and has rectitude of will for its own sake. Indeed, from an Anselmian point of view, it is possible to be in a state in which such rectitude is the only live option, as, presumably, is the case for those who are glorified, as well as elect angels and God himself. This, for the Anselmian, is a more morally exalted state than one in which there is the real prospect of some wiggle room or leeway to choose some alternative.

Of course, this analysis of libertarianism might be disputed. I raise the point about Anselm in order to show that there are theological cases where something like libertarianism seems to be in view, and where a principle of alternative possibilities or some other similar sense of metaphysical leeway does not appear to be a requirement of the analysis of such free will; instead, sourcehood is the fundamental issue. We can distinguish these two sorts of libertarianism by referring to them as leeway libertarianism and sourcehood libertarianism, respectively.¹⁴

The leeway libertarian thinks that in addition to the four components to libertarianism I have outlined thus far – namely, incompatibilism, the denial of determinism, the claim that agents are the source of actions that are free, and the claim that those actions that are free are actions for which humans are morally responsible – what is needed is some sort of principle of alternate possibilities in order for a creaturely action to count as one that is truly free and for which the person concerned is morally responsible.

By contrast, the sourcehood libertarian is like the Anselmian; she thinks that what is required for libertarian freedom is our four components: incompatibilism, the denial of determinism, the claim that agents are the source of actions that are free, and the claim that those actions that are free are actions for which humans are morally responsible. Add to this the claim about the possession of rectitude of will for its own sake, which is a kind of teleological claim about the right ordering of the will, and we have the major aspects of what the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Part One: Freedom and Sin
• Part Two: Person of Christ
• Part Three: Applied Salvation
• Part Four: Christian Life
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Copyright