What does the Bible say about the matter? The Bible is inconclusive on the matter, which is strong evidence of scriptural inerrancy, in my opinion. We can look at the stories of Pharaoh and of Saul to see why.

Pharaoh

In Exodus 4:21, before Pharaoh has had any chance to respond to God’s warnings, God says to Moses:

“The LORD said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.”

Later, after Pharaoh saw some miracles, the Bible reports, in Exodus 8:15:

“But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.”

and Exodus 8:32:

“But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.”

Clearly, Pharaoh seems culpable in these instances. However, after repeated warnings, when any reasonable human would have relented, Exodus 10:20 reports that God takes over:

“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.”

What happened here? Who is culpable? Is this a contradiction in the Bible?

Did God preordain all of the heart-hardening? Or did He simply utilize His foreknowledge to make an example of Pharaoh in Exodus 10 after Pharaoh had already irreversibly implicated himself somewhere after Exodus 8? Maybe Pharaoh had already condemned himself by some previous sins, long before Moses’s challenge, and the entire thing was a charade meant to bring glory to God?

I think it’s a mistake to try to parse this story out and conclusively decide which explanation applies. Just fear God and pray that you don’t end up like Pharaoh.

Saul

The story of Saul is very similar. Very early in the story, Samuel anoints David, passing the blessing of God from Saul to David. Saul’s condemnation is already predestined, before David is even anointed (1 Samuel 16:1-2):

The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way; I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king.”
But Samuel said, “How can I go? Saul will hear about it and kill me.”

The anointing of David is performed surreptitiously, and to the bitter end David refuses to slay Saul, who he still regards as “The Lord’s anointed”. When Saul dies, he apparently does so by his own hand (1 Samuel 31:1-6):

Now the Philistines fought against Israel; the Israelites fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines pressed hard after Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua. The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him critically.
Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me.”
But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day.

However, the narrative says that he was already critically wounded. His death was already a foregone conclusion, and he apparently hastened it on only out of a desire to avoid “abuse” by the “uncircumcised fellows”. Who killed Saul? God, the Philistines, or Saul himself?

The situation gets even more complicated in 2 Samuel 1:5-10:

Then David said to the young man who brought him the report, “How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?”

“I happened to be on Mount Gilboa,” the young man said, “and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him. When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, ‘What can I do?’

“He asked me, ‘Who are you?’
” ‘An Amalekite,’ I answered.

“Then he said to me, ‘Stand over me and kill me! I am in the throes of death, but I’m still alive.’

“So I stood over him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm and have brought them here to my lord.”

Whoa! So an Amalekite is now claiming credit for Saul’s death. Again, in this narrative, Saul was already in the “throes of death”, so his death was apparently already a foregone conclusion. And the Amalekite claims the slaying as a “mercy killing”. So who is culpable now?

Clearly, David regarded the Amalekite as being culpable (2 Samuel 1:14-16):

David asked him, “Why were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the LORD’s anointed?”

Then David called one of his men and said, “Go, strike him down!” So he struck him down, and he died. For David had said to him, “Your blood be on your own head. Your own mouth testified against you when you said, ‘I killed the LORD’s anointed.’ ”

Did the Amalekite kill Saul after Saul had already initiated suicide? Or was the Amalekite simply lying to curry favor with David (despite this clearly being represented as a mercy-killing)? How do we resolve all of these apparent contradictions?

1 Samuel and 2 Samuel are part of the same original book, so this is not an example of clerical error. These apparent contradictions are essential parts of the story. God pre-ordained Saul’s defeat, while Saul, the Philistines, and the Amalekite are all held culpable in one way or another.

Again, I think it’s a mistake to over-analyze these apparent contradictions. Fear God, and pray that you don’t end up like Saul or the Amalekite.

Conclusion

The Bible is clear that determinism is, at least sometimes, a possibility, but that personal culpability is a reality. This appears to be a contradiction, but regardless of our position on determinism or libertarian free will, it is exactly what we intuitively know to be true.

If the Bible took a strong conclusive stance in either direction (either that determinism is never true, or that culpability is false), the Bible would not be credibly inerrant. Such bickering is the domain of fallen man.

As a Calvinist, I’m not going to take a glorified view of man’s free will. But I find it interesting that atheists proudly hew to such determinism. Determinism is the only honest position for a materialist to take, but it’s ironic that the atheists are so proud of this position. The topic generally comes up in discussions of justice (“How can God be just if he predestined me to evil?”) or in discussions of the stupidity of Christians (“Those stupid Christians talk about free will, but we atheists don’t believe in such illusions!”).

Evolutionary biology suggests that altruism is a sort of “costly signal” which signals one’s suitability as a mate. Standing up for something we believe to be true, at great cost to ourselves (and especially in the face of universal opposition) is sexier to women than a peacock’s feathers are to a peahen. Such intellectual honesty is the sexiest thing in the known universe. A man’s willingness to extinguish his own ego in service to the truth of determinism is, therefore, the most costly signal man could give to a woman. It is the ultimate altruistic “costly signal”, right?

The problem is, costly signals are, by definition, signals that cannot be faked. If you can fake it, it’s not a properly costly signal. And the atheist’s commitment to determinism is nothing if not fraudulent.

Atheist materialists like to explain that there is no such thing as free will. They want you to know that they are totally cool with that fact. They want you to find them to be sexy and courageous (or at least, they want you to admit yourself superstitious and delusional for believing in free will). But it’s all a bunch of posturing. For all practical purposes, these proud atheists operate under the same delusion, and adopt the same lie, that they claim to reject.

What, exactly, is different about the atheist who professes determinism on the Internet, and the Pelagian who professes free will? In practice, how is the life of the professed determinist different? Do these atheist determinists “cut to the chase” and commit suicide, since “all ends in death”? Do they reject “atman” in daily practice, and fully realize “anatman”? Hardly! Every act of the atheist determinist belies his professed belief, proving that his profession is a sterile, impotent, and purely intellectual assent; far removed from any practical manifestation. Indeed, the only practically measurable difference between the atheist and the Pelagian is the belief about free will that each professes on Internet message boards! And this professed belief has no impact on actual behavior.

In species where female sexual selection is operative (e.g. peafowl and humans), any public forum which includes females is a platform for lekking. In such forums, women need to be extraordinarily skeptical of any feather displays, and need to ensure that feather displays are authentically costly (i.e. not fraudulent). The best females do not tolerate male beliefs which are fictional, imaginary, and which impose no cost. In practice, any professed belief in determinism is virtually indistinguishable from a belief in free will, and is therefore useless for signalling.

I’m not ready to reject dualism wholesale yet, and I’m not sure I even know what that would look like. However, I don’t think it makes sense to say that God’s interaction with the world is “supernatural”, in the sense that people today use the word.

People today use the word “supernatural” to mean “impossible through natural means”. This makes no sense to me, since the moment you observe something, it has obviously been proven to be possible. If we say that something is “supernatural” simply because we don’t have an explanation for how it could’ve arisen through natural means, we’re engaging in “God of the gaps”, and I don’t think that God would want that.

Worse, when we insist that God’s hand is, by definition, only that which can’t be explained by physical means, we’re essentially banishing God from the physical universe. I can understand why atheist materialists would want to promote this view, but it’s astonishing to me that any Christian would support this view. Christian orthodoxy for 2,000 years has insisted on God incarnate, bodily resurrection, opposition to Gnostic dualism, and belief in any number of other materialist-compatible positions.

The word “miracle” is perhaps slightly better. We could use the word “miracle” to describe something completely unexpected, rare, or inexplicably coincidental — yet physically possible. Used this way, the moment a “miracle” happens, it is incontrovertible proof of physical possibility. If a miracle were miraculous primarily due to physical impossibility, the idea of miracle, and thus the “hand of God” would be self-refuting. But has this ever been the standard view of miracles? It seems to me that the linkage between “miracle” and “physical impossibility” is a very modern view (and incoherent, as we see). In scriptural usage, miracles seem to be things which are physically possible (and in the case of Moses’s staff and the court magicians, even repeatable by others), but very unpredictable and coincidental. When coincidental, the coincidence generally centers around a moral context where someone has been granted some insight about what is going to happen.

For the committed materialist, ability to predict the future requires no supernatural pixie dust, since everything is predetermined anyway. And even for someone who believes in libertarian free will (by definition, not a materialist), the ability to look ahead over a certain window of time is not problematic. Therefore, we do not need dualism or the colloquial “supernatural” to explain miracles in any Biblical sense of the word. Of course, we don’t have a materialist explanation for future prediction any more than we have a materialist explanation of intentionality, but neither fact ought to give the committed materialist much grief. Materialists will agree, no doubt, that we don’t yet have a solution, but “we can taste it”.

Postulating some exorbitant privilege for God, where His hand escapes or negates the laws of physics, seems to me to be an act of little faith. Is God that impotent, that He cannot reconcile physics to Himself? Therefore, I don’t see why we would insist that God’s hand is immaterial or anti-material. It may be true that His fingers are not clad in animal skin like ours, but He has a “hand” that is physical, and which manipulates the physical. I still think that the attempts to measure God’s finger length or calculate the size of God’s arm are stupidly literalist, and even idolatrous. But the staunch insistence on the physicality of God’s hand can be seen as a rejection of an unnecessary and counterproductive dualism. And to the Muslim theologians, I am thankful for that.

I believe that God loves everyone, but it is clear from the Bible that He also hates some people. The whole issue seems irrelevant to the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate. I just don’t see any point at all in speaking on behalf of God about who He hates. Let’s just make sure that He doesn’t hate us.

There is a funny video mocking the Calvinist position, which shows a hapless Calvinist approaching someone and saying, “God might love you; believe in Him and be saved!”. The apostles didn’t lead with “God loves you”, and I find no precedent for such an approach in early Christianity. So I wonder why we would want to anchor our own evangelism in “God loves you”?

On the other hand, I’ve become increasingly appalled at the behavior of “Calvinists” on the web.  It’s hard to believe that these people believe what they claim to believe.

In researching the history of the split, I found that Calvin and his supporters accused Arminius of siding with the Roman Catholics.  The fear was that Arminius’s interpretation would start a slippery slope to ecumenicalism and rapprochement with Rome, and it was this fear in part which led to Calvin taking such a hard position on predestination.  Ironically, it is this same mentality that underlies certain fundamentalists who want to elevate Young Earth Creationism to the status of “essential doctrine”.  These fundamentalists express dismay that conservative evangelicals have adopted most of the historical fundamentalist agenda, and the fundamentalists are terrified that ecumenicalism will triumph over militant separation – so they grasp at new doctrines to reinforce separation and defeat ecumenicalism.

Regardless of what threat Arminius posed to early Protestantism, I think it’s clear that modern Calvinist bloggers are out to discredit Protestantism.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many of these strident bloggers and comment trolls are bankrolled by some anti-Protestant conspiracy.  At a minimum, these borderline-autistic idiots discredit Calvinism, which contributes to the slippery slope of ecumenicalism and makes the universalists look downright reasonable.  That is no small feat.

(Of course, there are exceptions.  For example, Dan Phillips at TeamPyro has a series titled “communicating better”, which presents Calvinist ideas in a common-sense format that is not gratuitously offensive or autistic.  Contrast Dan’s irenic style with the relatively disgusting treatment of Calvinism from speakers at Piper’s upcoming “Desiring God” conference, and you’ll see why Phillips is the exception that proves the rule.)

It turns out that the surface area of disagreement, while meaningful, is very small.  Contrary to the accusations, Arminianism has absolutely nothing to do with Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. And contrary to what I have recently read from a respected Calvinist preacher, Arminians do not even disagree with Calvinists on all 5 points of “TULIP”.  Arminians fully hold to the doctrines of Total Depravity and Perseverance of the Saints (the T and P in TULIP).  Olson documents this exhaustively, showing that Arminius was arguably more strenuous in defense of these doctrines than Calvin.  All of the Arminian thinkers were impeccably orthodox on these two points, and it is telling that none of the anti-Arminian accusations on the Internet ever bother to provide evidence for their charge in the form of Arminian doctrinal statements or writings.

The real “beef” between Arminians and Calvinists, therefore, comes down to just three doctrines (the U, L, and I in TULIP):

• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement
• Irresistible Grace

On these three points, Arminians accuse the Calvinists of making God into the devil, while Calvinists accuse Arminians of rejecting God’s sovereignty.  As far as I can tell, that about sums it up.

As my brother observed, this was a Presbyterian church, so nobody can say that the congregation were not warned.  The pastor probably warned the congregation of the imminence of God’s wrath often.  And now their building is a shrine to idolatry and sophistry.

~

One of the only good things to come out of economics recently is the field of “behavioral economics”, which shatters the myth of the “rational consumer”, and provides sound empirical evidence for the concept of the “totally depraved consumer”.  For most people, behavioral economics is redundant, since we already knew that people are not rational or ethical.  But for people who have been brainwashed by scientism, the field provides an invaluable tool to reacquaint them with common sense.  It uses their own tools to dismantle their fantasies.

In that spirit, check out Tyler Cowan’s post in honor of Calvin’s birthday: “John Calvin was a Behavioral Economist”.

The anti-Calvinists have a lot of fun with this, imagining the contortions that a true Calvinist would have to go through in order to share the Gospel honestly:

• “Jesus died for my sins, and he might have died for yours, too!”
• “Jesus died for my sins, but you have no hope unless you are one of the elect like me!”
• “Jesus died for the sins of a small group of people, which sadly might not include you”.

After I first started dating, I dated a number of girls over a number of years without ever falling in love.  I sensed that it would be very wrong to lie to someone about loving them, so when girls tried to raise the subject, I learned to be very sneaky.  I learned to change the subject, or even to preempt the question with statements like “I love how you make me feel”, or “I love hanging out with you”. 

Since then, I’ve fallen in love and married, but this experience taught me a thing or two about sneakiness, and I can understand why anti-Calvinists find the sneakiness to be funny.  But I think that the anti-Calvinists are completely wrong on this point.

The typical Arminian will evangelize the gospel by saying, “Jesus died for your sins”.  But they know as well as the Calvinist that some of the people they approach will NOT be saved.  The Arminian and Calvinist would agree 100% with the honesty of an evangelical introduction, “Jesus died for the sins of the world, but I have no idea whether or not you will be saved”. 

Both Calvinist and Arminian would agree that such a statement is true.  The only difference is that the Arminian chooses to obfuscate the truth (and even mocks the Calvinist for hesitating to obfuscate).  The Arminian argues that it’s best to present a half-truth at first, and only share the full truth after the convert has been "snookered”, so to speak.

This would be identical to my telling my youthful dating partners, “Sure, I love you honey!”, and then, later, having to qualify that earlier affirmation with, “Well, when I said ‘love’, it didn’t necessarily mean ‘love’”.  Or worse, “Well, when I said ‘love’, that was before you proved yourself to be unlovable”.

So I conclude that if the Calvinists are sneaky, the Arminians are worse than sneaky on this particular point.  The Arminians want to be able to say exactly what you want to hear, in order to get what they want out of you, and therefore they are willing to obfuscate and twist the truth – the truth that not everyone will be saved.  The truth that some will perish.

I will stop short of claiming that the Arminians are apostate.  But both camps clearly place a different sense of gravity on truthfulness with the unconverted.  Arminians seem to think that the end justifies the means, while Calvinists seem to think that you must be respectful and avoid manipulation when talking to the unconverted. 

The Arminians want so badly to be able to say “I love you”, and so desperate to avoid saying “I love how you make me feel”; that they change the definition of love.  Which is sneakier?

“What constituency is there for pessimism? People believe optimism is necessary, an American right. The presumption of optimism is the problem. That’s what creates the debt we have now.”

This is exactly the point I was making in my post about “Eschatology and Epistemology: Christians and the Housing Bubble”.

This also explains one major beef I have with the defenders of Arminianism.  I’ve seen numerous people argue that “God is Love, so he’ll give every unbeliever numerous chances to be saved, even it that doesn’t involve acknowledging the supremacy of Christ.”  They take God’s love and throw out the fear of God.  They even argue, “What constituency is there for fear of God?  People won’t believe in God or feel good about God if he is fearsome.  Belief in our own innate goodness is an American right.”

This presumption of our own innate goodness, of our own entitlement to stand in judgment of God and accept him only if he is harmless and cuddly enough, is what creates the spiritual deficit we have now.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 is instructive:

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Now, as I review the particulars of the various camps, I must admit that I have the most sympathy for Calvinism.  Does this make me a Calvinist?  I highly doubt that I would agree with everything that modern Calvinists profess, but so far I am agreeing 100% with the materials that I’ve read.

Most that I have read which claim to be introductory to Calvinism deals with the sovereignty of God.  In fact, Chesterton once argued that Calvinism is an imbalanced and overly exaggerated doctrine based on the truth of God’s sovereignty.

Two documents I read are this one and this one.  Neither discusses the “five points” or addressed “once saved always saved”.  They simply argue for the supremacy of God and the depraved, fallen condition of man.  How could anyone disagree with either point?  How could anyone who has experienced even a sliver of human nature disagree?

The authors of both articles insist that people do disagree with the truths outlined in their documents, and that those people are called “Arminians”.  They make the Arminians sound like a truly blasphemous bunch.

Considering that none of the Catholic saints I’ve read would even disagree with the documents I’ve read from professed Calvinists so far, I am suspicious that these Calvinists are presenting their doctrine so as to seem maximally agreeable and reasonable, and are masking any doctrinal points that are weak or open to challenge.  I’m suspicious that they are beginning to engage a tractor beam … and it’s working.