Everything that happens has a cause
A cause is the thing that makes something the way that it is. X is the cause of Y if X is the reason that Y happened. Further, causes are necessarily connected to their effects. In other words, if X makes it certain that Y will occur, X is said to be the cause of Y. If the occurrence of X does not make certain the occurrence of Y, we do not say that X caused Y. Rather, we would merely say that X made Y possible.[1]

We all know that everything that happens has a cause. We live life based upon this assumption, and without it could not make sense of the world. If your car won't start, you try to find out why. If you get extremely sick, you go to the doctor to find out what is causing your illness. And nobody expects a raging tiger to come into existence in the middle of the room for no reason at all. It is utterly opposed to common sense to think that something can come to be without any reason behind it at all.

Another good argument is that "If a happening has no cause, then it could have been different in the way it happened, even if everything just prior to it were exactly the same. Since observation shows that whenever there are differences in the way things usually happen, there are also differences in the prior conditions, we can conclude, that all happenings have causes."[2]

All of our choices have a cause--that is, they are made for a reason
If everything has a cause, then it is clear that our choices must have causes as well. They do not happen without reason. This is, in fact, the assumption that we all have. Often times we say to one another, "Why did you do that?" This is the same as saying, "What is the reason behind your choice? What caused you to act in that way?" The person will often respond, "I did that because of x, y, and z."[3]

To say that our choices have a cause is simply to say that we make our all of our decisions with a definite end in view. That is, we act with a purpose. This purpose that we have in view functions as the reason that we make the choice that we do. Thus, the reasons we have for acting serve as the cause of our choices because they move us to act and explain why we acted the way that we did. And we know that all of our choices must be made for a reason because otherwise we would be acting without a cause, and we have already seen that it is impossible for anything to happen without a cause.

All of our choices are made according to the reasons that we think are best
But aren't there often times many reasons in favor of various choices? For example, what about when you are torn between doing homework and getting together with friends? How then do we decide? The answer is that in every choice we always choose the thing that is most appealing to us. In other words, our choices are not only made for a reason, they are made according to the reason that we think is best. Now, this doesn't mean that we always choose what is most logical. Our emotions as well as our logic enters into our decisions. Thus, it is perhaps better to word it this way: we always choose the option that we have the greatest preference for. Two other ways to express this are that we choose according to our greatest desire, or that we always choose what we think is best. But it seems that the clearest way to express this truth is by saying "greatest preference" because this seems to most clearly convey the fact that there is a combination of logical and emotional factors in the reasons for our choices.[4]

I will give three reasons supporting the fact that we always choose what we most prefer. First, it is self-evident, for to deny it is to run into absurdities. The alternatives would be "we often choose what we think is worst," or "we often choose what we don't want." Second, if we could choose contrary to our greatest preference, then that would mean that a weaker influence could overpower the stronger influence--which is a contradiction.[5]

Third, choosing contrary to your greatest preference would be equal to choosing without reason (which we have seen to be impossible). Why is this? Because then there is no explanation why the person came to choose what they did. Let me phrase the dilemma this way: If you could choose contrary to your greatest preference, you would either have a reason for acting this way, or you wouldn't. If there is a reason for your acting this way, then this means that you are actually making the choice because it was more reasonable than the other one. But this is the same as saying that you choose according to your greatest preference--your greatest preference being the thing that was most reasonable. But if there were no reasons for this choice that was contrary to your greatest preference, then the choice was essentially made without cause because no reason could be given for why you chose one thing over another. In this situation, you would be inclined to a certain choice, and yet for no reason at all choose something else. As we saw earlier, it is impossible to make a choice without a cause.

But what about, for example, when someone chooses to study for a test when they really would have found greater enjoyment in going to a movie? In that case, the person desired the long-range benefits of the good grade that studying would bring more than the short term enjoyment a good movie would have brought. In and of itself, the movie would have been most enjoyable. But all things considered, studying was more preferable.

How our choices are determined
Since we always choose the option that we find most preferable, then it is clear that our choices are determined--they are determined by our greatest preference. But since this is a determination to choose the option that we want the most, it in no way destroys our moral agency.

Having understood this, it is not hard to see how God can control all things without violating our moral agency. He simply arranges the situation so that the option which we find most appealing is the choice that He has ordained for us to make. In other words, if God wants us to choose option A instead of option B, He works things out so that option A is the one that we find most preferable. Thus, God is in sovereign control, yet we are choosing what we want most and are therefore making real, genuine choices.

But some people object at this point: "Wait a minute. Since we don't ultimately determine our preferences, how can we be held accountable for the choices that necessarily flow from them?"

This is a good question because it allows us to clarify an important point: It doesn't matter that we don't ultimately determine our preferences. All that matters is that we are choosing the things that we want the most. In other words, moral accountability does not depend upon whether our choices are determined (caused), but on how our choices are determined. That is a very important point, so let me repeat in slightly different words: ultimate self-determination is not necessary for us to be justly accountable for our bad choices and it is not necessary to make our good choices genuine. What these things arise from is that we are choosing the things that we want.

This fact is what we saw in the Scriptures above. For according to the Scriptures, God is the ultimate cause of all of our choices, and yet He holds us accountable for our choices. Thus, determinism does not destroy moral accountability. One does not need the power of ultimate self-determination in order to be morally accountable for his actions. Rather, the Scriptures seem to teach compatibilism, which argues that our choices are genuine simply because we are doing what is agreeable to us.

Not only is compatiblism assumed and taught in the Scriptures, it is also consistent with common sense. Our own common sense shows that as long as we are choosing according to our greatest preferences, our moral agency is not destroyed to any degree. Who could ever honestly say, "My choice to give money to the poor wasn't genuine because I was doing the option that I had the greatest preference for"?! Would a judge really excuse the criminal who said, "You can't hold me accountable for my crime because I wanted to do it! In fact, I wanted to do it so much that I could not have done otherwise"? Of course not! The criminal would actually be compounding his guilt by the fact that he wanted to do it so much, not excusing it!

Therefore it is in perfect agreement with common sense that, even though all of our choices have been predetermined, they are genuine and we can be held responsible for them because they are the choices that we considered most reasonable to make. It is important to recognize, however, that God does not cause a sinful choice to be reasonable in the same way that He causes a good choice to be reasonable. God causes good by means of positive causation, but is behind evil by means of negative causation. What is the difference?