The sun causes day on the earth by producing light. This is what I mean by positive cause. God causes good by producing goodness in one's heart, and thus is its positive cause. But just as the darkness of the night is not something that is produced by the suns rays--but rather is caused by their absence--so also God directs the evil desires in people's hearts by means of withholding His restraining grace to the extent that they desire to do the thing that He has ordained. We must strongly affirm that God "does not tempt anyone" (James 1:13) because He does not produce the sinful desires in people's hearts, but determines and controls them by means of circumstances and the degree to which He withholds His grace upon their hearts. Further, humans are all born sinful. So the negative causation God exercises is simply making us act according to our own natures. Thus, God cannot be blamed for sin because He controls evil by means of negative causation--He directs it by the absence of goodness rather, not by producing evil. John Piper gives good insight into the way God brings about preferences (motives) to cause people to act: "always keep in mind that everything God does toward men--His commanding, His calling, His warning, His promising, His weeping over Jerusalem,--everything is His means of creating situations which function as motives to illicite the acts of will which He has ordained to come to pass. In this way He ultimately determines all acts of volition (though not all in the same way) and yet holds man accountable only for those acts which they want most to do."[14] To sum up, moral accountability does not depend upon whether our choices are determined, it depends upon how they are determined. As long as our choices are caused by our desires and reasonable motives, they are responsible acts. And since God controls our choices by controlling our preferences, His sovereignty does not violate our moral agency. Further, while God is the ultimate cause of all things, He is behind good and evil in different ways. God regulates circumstances and the degree of His grace to bring about the preferences which will illicit the choices that He has ordained. The fallacy of Arminianism is in thinking that one cannot be held responsible for something unless it is an entirely free and undetermined act. Some objections considered On the other hand, if we do not obtain our desires by an act of choice, then either those preferences had no cause (which we have already seen to be impossible), or else they are ultimately a result of God's predestining plan--which brings us right back to the Calvinist view. Therefore, it is important to understand that we do not make something preferable to us. We do not choose our preferences. Rather, they are ultimately brought about by God by means of circumstances, our character, and other things. For example, I studied for a test a few weeks ago because it was more reasonable to me than not studying. Now, I did not make studying the most reasonable thing. Rather, I considered the situation and recognized that studying was the most appealing thing to my mind. As a result, I chose to study. Clearly this was a genuine choice. Yet, it was also causally determined (and thus could not have been otherwise) because I necessarily chose the option that I found most reasonable. So both determinism and moral responsibility are therefore compatible. What role do our character and circumstances have in our choices? As we saw earlier in the John Piper quote, the answer seems to be that God uses them to bring about our preferences. Thus, on a secondary level our preferences are a result of our character and present circumstances. In other words, the kind of things that we find preferable depends upon the kind of person that we are. Because our preference are in accordance with who we are, they are genuinely our preferences. Do we choose our characters? If one objects that we choose our character (and thus ultimately our desires), I respond that while we can and do affect our character by our choices, it is hopelessly contradictory to think of our wills as the ultimate cause of our character. Our character is not something that exists independent from us, it is us. Therefore, in order to choose our own characters we would need to exist before we actually exist! This brings us to another important truth. By creating you, God determined your character. Since our character to a large extent determine the preferences we have, God to a large extent determined the things we would choose because He ultimately designed our character. Someone may say that God brings us into existence but in doing so He does not determine our characters. But "how can God bring X into existence without thereby defining the nature of X, which will be determinative of how it will function and behave? If God has not defined its controlling nature, in what sense is it X that God has brought into existence (rather than not-X)?"[6] The possibility that God often directs our desires by directing our character should also help us to further see the consistency between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. As we saw earlier, your character is not something that exists separate from you. It is not a grid that is forced upon your behavior. Rather, it is you. Obviously, you cannot be free from yourself. Your preferences (and thus choices) are truly yours and are genuine because they are in accordance with who you are. God's sovereignty does not in the least change that, but rather seems to work by means of it and thus preserves moral accountability. The only way to escape the sovereignty of God would be to escape being a creature. God the creator is always sovereign over what He creates because, in creating, He determines the design and mode of its working. Arminian freedom is impossible 1. We have an ultimate self-determining power wherein we determine our own choices. The power of ultimate self-determination is impossible First, they are only pushing the problem back one step. Sure, the choice had a cause. But they are saying that the agent who made the choice was not caused to make it. As we saw earlier, this is impossible because everything that happens must have a cause. Second, isn't this act of the agent to cause his own choice itself a choice--the choice to make a choice? If so, this means that He is making a choice before He makes His choice! Third, the Arminian view contradicts all of the evidence we have seen which shows that our choices are not self-determined, but are determined by our preferences. Fourth, if it is claimed that the agent causes his own choice by determining his own preferences, the inconsistency of that belief has also been shown above. |
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