Calvinism, Free Will, & Evil

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And right off the bat,

I need to apologize. If those of you guys were listening to the past episode when

I had Braxton Hunter from Trinity Radio and Tim Stratton of Free Thinking Ministries on to talk about Star Wars and apologetics, basically trying to draw out apologetic application from pop culture, things like that.

I had technical difficulties and I was kicked off my own show. And Tim and Braxton did an excellent job because they are nerds in both apologetics and Star Wars, they were able to carry the conversation for the bulk of the episode.

Funny, I've never watched my own show before. So since I couldn't get back on, I just sat down and just watched them go at it.

So it was pretty funny. And unfortunately I was unable to join that fun discussion.

So that will be up on the podcast soon. And so folks who listened to the podcast can give that a listen.

I thought it went very well. Just a couple of quick announcements before I bring my guest on, who I'm really excited to have on.

And those of you who saw the thumbnail and the thumbnail on Facebook and YouTube, many of you who will be listening in will know who my guest is.

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So super excited about that. Those videos will be going out on the 25th. So there's still time to sign up.

Folks are signing up and I'm super excited about that. All right, now, without further ado,

I'd like to introduce my guest, Scott Christensen, whom I'm just going to give him an opportunity to tell folks a little bit about himself.

And then we'll jump into our super duper interesting, when you add super duper before anything, it just makes everything sound cool, doesn't it?

We're going to get into our super duper interesting topic of Calvinism, free will, and evil.

So without further ado, I'd like to invite my guest, Scott Christensen.

How's it going, Scott? I'm doing good, welcome. All right, very good. Now you're going to notice, I'm going to be looking down.

I'm actually looking at you. My camera is this way. I don't want you to think that I'm playing candy crusher or words with friends on my phone while you're pontificating on reform theology, okay?

There you go. All right, well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm married,

I've got four sons. I've been a pastor for almost 20 years and recently moved to Kerrville, Texas, where I'm the associate pastor at Kerrville Bible Church and really love it here in the

Hill Country. And, you know, I've been a Christian for, gosh, probably 40 years, maybe, you know, maybe a little longer than that.

So it might give you a sense of my age, but - You look youngish.

You look, you got the gray, but you kind of look like you're still in the game, man. Yeah, well, I ride mountain bikes with my son and he keeps me young, so yeah.

All right, very good. And, well, folks who most definitely will be familiar with your work, they'll be familiar with your two books,

What About Free Will and What About Evil. Why don't you give us some background information?

What led you to write? Well, let's start with the first one. What led you to write specifically your book on free will?

There's so much literature out there. What were you seeking to add to the discussion or maybe take what has already been discussed and kind of put it in a different perspective?

What was your heart behind that? Yeah, free will was one of those questions that a lot of Christians grapple with.

I was a young man. I was probably as in my 20s. I was in college when I first encountered

Calvinism and the whole idea of election and predestination from a Calvinistic perspective and so forth.

And a friend of mine had introduced me to that and I'd never heard of it before, never heard it taught in church before.

And at first I was like, this is crazy. But then one day

I was waiting for a class in college and I was in my car reading

Romans chapter nine and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Okay. Just the reality of God's sovereignty of His determinate will in salvation.

And from that day forward, I never looked back in terms of my embrace of the reality of God's meticulous sovereignty and so forth.

And of course I had a lot to learn from that point onward. But one of the biggest questions that kind of loomed in my mind for many, many years was this whole question of free will.

And so I really kind of made it a goal to try to tackle that question over the course of many years and so I kind of kept a file on my computer where anytime

I read about any passages of scripture that I kind of reflected on or things that I read in books, quotes and things like that,

I just kind of collected my thoughts on all of that. Slowly I just began to kind of organize it and then

I was preaching through a series of sermons in Ephesians one on the whole doctrine of election and people in my congregation were asking questions about free will.

And I was like, well, this is a good time to pull out all that material. So I started organizing it more in a more cohesive kind of way.

And it was probably about a year later that I decided, gosh, this might make a good book.

And so I started working on the book and landed it with my publisher,

PNR. And the whole design of the book was to, really it was a pastor speaking to pastors.

And as a pastor, how do I grapple with these questions? I know other pastors grapple with these questions because people in their congregations grapple with them.

So I wanted it to have enough substance that pastors could have a cohesive and intelligent way to deal with the issues so that they could speak effectively to their congregations.

And of course it's drawn attention to a lot of educated lay people too. They're not easy books for your average.

Right. I think they're not super academic books either. So I tried to have a balance between the less academic and but still being rigorous enough that it would at least pass some academic muster, if you will.

Well, I mean, it's definitely a very well written book, very clear and definitely at that popular level, but still challenging that you have to work a little through it.

So, but that's good. I mean, if a book challenges you, that's not a bad thing, right? What I think is a temptation for a lot of people who engage in a lot of these debates over free will and things like that, that they are tempted to think of it as a purely academic question.

That it's just, you know, when the philosophers start talking, you know, it's really kind of like, well, this has no relevance to my own life.

And that's really not the case as you understand the notion of God sovereignly in control of all things, working out his decree, how human freedom plays into that, how that affects our day to day.

There's a lot of application there that I think the Christian can benefit there. So I think your book really brings out in an educated way, but in a way that the common person could understand.

And I think you do a really good job there. Yeah, yeah, that was my attempt was, you know, this is not just something in the halls of academia.

It's, it affects our everyday lives as Christians. It helps us think about things like prayer and evangelism and sanctification, you know, and it's very critical that we understand how

God's role and our role, you know, is involved in those things.

Sure. That we have a proper perspective on the Christian life.

Yeah, very good. And so that's, What About Free Will? I mean, you didn't waste any time.

You're like, I'm gonna write another book. What am I gonna call it? I wanna write a book about evil. So what about free will? What about evil?

What about evil? So what's the background story with regards to that book? What led you to write that? Yeah, well, that was, you know,

I wanted to write the What About Free Will book, but I didn't want to write the

What About Evil book, but my editor, my publisher convinced me that I needed to write that book.

I addressed the question in a kind of a cursory way of what about free will, the whole problem of evil and theodicy and so forth.

And my editor really liked what I had to say. And he really encouraged me to write a full book on it.

So it was far greater task that laid before me in writing that book because there's far more written on that topic.

It's far more daunting, even than free will. Free will seemed daunting enough, but this was an even more daunting book.

It took me five years. The free will book took me about a year or so to write, but of course I'd already accumulated a lot of my thoughts on it.

It took me literally five years. I mean, I started writing the book on what about evil even before free will was published.

And so about four and a half years, it took me to research and write What About Evil. And yeah, so it was, yeah.

It's very brave of you because, I mean, I engage in apologetics. So when we talk about these things, it's always within the context of some sort of debate, whether it's with a

Christian who disagrees or a non -Christian who tries to take, for example, what appears to be a logical inconsistency between a

God who determines all things and a sufficient freedom of man such that he's held morally responsible. And so when you connect the topic of Calvinism and evil, then it's like, that's different.

I mean, you got the free will defense by our non -Calvinist friends, but then when people, oh, you're a

Calvinist. I remember I debated a guy once and when he learned I was a Calvinist, he goes, oh, so I have a whole other set of questions.

So sometimes when we talk about evil in connection to Calvinism, then

I think it becomes a lot more interesting because there's a lot of misunderstanding with regards to how Calvinists understand how that whole dynamic works.

So do you address that in your book? Like the consistency that there's no logical inconsistency with like a good

God, an all -determining God and the existence of evil? Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, the book really, it addresses a lot of the standard issues and I kind of walk through a lot of the standard responses to the problem of evil and especially the free will defense, which is the most popular and widespread response to the problem.

And I look at some of the other responses as well.

Sure. But then I spend a greater part of the rest of the book dealing with an actual positive theodicy.

Sure, sure. And so, which is not typical in books on the problem of evil.

Typically there's more of what is called a defense, which bears less of a burden. You're just simply trying to defend

God against charges that he is morally culpable for evil. Whereas the theodicy technically is trying to give a positive reason of why

God actually purposed evil in the world. Okay, all right, very good. And I'm sure we'll return to that topic in just a moment, but let's actually go over, on the thumbnail of this video,

I entitled it Calvinism, Free Will and Evil. That's kind of broad. And I'd like for you, if you can, define for folks what

Calvinism is and perhaps talk a little bit about the common misconception that Calvinism is wrapped up in just this whole free will issue.

When someone says, I'm a Calvinist, oh, you're those guys who deny free will, aren't you, right? I grew up in a

Pentecostal church. And so when someone asked me, what kind of Christian are you? I'm a

Pentecostal, growing up. And they were like, oh, you're one of them born agains. That's what they used to call us, born agains.

I'm like, well, any true Christian would be born again, I'd hope. But there are a lot of caricatures with regards to what

Calvinism is. Why don't you give us a definition and then perhaps address why

Calvinism is not necessarily this narrow scope as it pertains to salvation?

Yeah, typically Calvinism is associated with the five points of Calvinism that's identified by the acronym

TULIP, which stands for total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.

And by and large, those questions do connect to the issue of salvation.

But really when you're talking about Calvinism, I think Calvinism really starts with this doctrine of God.

And it's the question, who is God? What kind of God exists? And Anselm, a 11th century theologian, basically came up with this phrase that God is someone of whom we cannot think of anyone greater.

He is a being of which we cannot think of a greater being. And so in modern philosophical literature, that's known as perfect theism or, you know -

Perfect being theism, right? Yeah, perfect being theism. And it's the idea that God, you know, we can't conceive, you know, whatever the greatest notion that we could conceive

God to be, he's even greater than that and we can't conceive of anything greater than that. And I think that that really fits with a

Calvinistic understanding of the nature of who God is. And so it entails a whole host of his attributes and things like that, that are connected to that, or sometimes it's known as classical theism.

And there are debates even there among Calvinists on how to define all that. But that's what I believe.

Calvinism really starts with your doctrine of God and then it moves to your doctrine of man.

It's, you know, Calvin himself said at the beginning of his institutes that the two greatest pieces of knowledge we can have is knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.

And without a proper knowledge of God, we can't really know who we are ourselves as human beings. So would you say that Calvinism is sort of like, it starts with God and like a big old red carpet, it rolls out and is applied to all the other areas that are not

God. So God is self -contained, God is absolute, God is sovereign, God decrees and gives meaning and definition to all things.

And as you kind of unravel all of creation, it is his sovereignty and all of his attributes applied to all those different spheres of human experience.

Would that be a good summary of what Calvinism broadly do? Right, because it starts with, you know, the transcendence of God, the simplicity of God, His aseity, you know,

His self -sufficiency, self -existence. And from that, you know, you move to God as creator and when you think of God's aseity,

His self -existence, His self -sufficiency, His self -satisfaction, if you will, you know, that indicates that God has no needs,

He is fully satisfied in Himself. So He didn't need to create anything, He chose to create. Well, why did

He choose to create? I think He chose to create because He wanted to share in the self -satisfaction of His own glory with creation.

And He didn't need to create, but once He did create, you know, then we see this distinction between the creator and the creature.

And so one of the key things of Calvinism is there's a very strong creator -creature distinction.

God is transcendent, He's not absolute transcendence because God has entered into His creation via the incarnation and through His revelation.

But He'd be unknowable if He was completely transcendent. So we distinguish between the incomprehensibility of God, we cannot fully comprehend

Him, but that doesn't mean that He is unknowable, but He is not exhaustible. Yeah, that's important because the term, a lot of these theological terms,

I think can be misleading when you speak about, especially with TULIP, I mean, there's been debate as to whether TULIP properly captures what

Calvinism is getting at with regards to its application to soteriology. But when you talk about things like the incomprehensibility of God, it's like, well, yeah,

God's incomprehensible, so how could we know anything about Him? And that's not the case at all, right?

We need to be able to define these terms and we need to emphasize the fact that God is a revealing being so that we could comprehend

Him in as much as He's revealed Himself. So those clarifications I think are super important.

All right, well, let's shift a little bit, okay? So I suppose this is an easy question.

Why are you a Calvinist? But you know what? The simplicity of that question, I think is still important to ask.

Why don't you share with folks why you're a Calvinist and perhaps people who are

Calvinist listening will be like, yeah, that's why I'm a Calvinist too. There might be a cool connection there. Why don't you explain a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, really the bottom line was is I was absolutely compelled by what

I was reading in Scripture. And I tend to think that we are naturally

Pelagian in our thinking and then when we become Christians, we might move to semi -Pelagianism.

And then the more we read Scripture, we escape that if we're being honest with ourselves and if we're being true to the text.

I think it's unavoidable. And true

Calvinism is an absolutely mind -shattering and human humbling reality.

And I think those Calvinists that have lost that and what some people call the cage stage version of Calvinism, they've missed it.

They've missed it both. I mean, true Calvinism is an absolutely radically humbling reality and a massively

God -glorifying place to come to. And I think it's the only consistent way to understand who

God is and to understand the massiveness of his grace and his glory in redeeming such wretched creatures as we.

And so it gives whole new light to the reality of my salvation, to just how amazing grace really is.

And I just, I can't see it any other way. And the more you read

Scripture, the more you immerse yourself in the God of Scripture, I just don't see how you can escape just the massiveness of his glory and who he is.

He is so awesome that we can't fully comprehend it.

Sure, sure. Yeah, and that's the same thing for me. I'm just drawn, I've always been drawn to Calvin is when

I started studying theology. I didn't always study theology and stuff like that, but I was always drawn to it because just it smacks you in the face in Scripture.

Now I know people who are not Calvinist about, like, well, those scriptures are debatable. Sure, but there is, there seems to be a beautiful consistency with how the

Bible speaks about God and our relationship to him. And so I too am convinced by Scripture and I'm always drawn back to the scriptural aspect to it.

Now, granted people who watch my show, they know I place great emphasis upon apologetics.

And so I'm much better at defending my apologetic methodology and engaging at that level than I am of Calvinism.

I'm sure someone who is not a Calvinist can grill me and ask me questions I don't know. But what gives me great comfort is that even in my not knowing the doctrines of grace, they always direct me to Scripture in ways that non -Calvinist understandings of Scripture don't.

That's not a knockdown argument or anything. I'm just, from my experience, but I've always been enamored by the fact that it seems to be thoroughly biblical.

All right, well, let's shift. Let me let people know, if folks have questions, you can type in the questions in the comments and towards the back end of the episode,

I will post them up on the screen where Scott can try to give his answer. And if he gets the answer wrong, we'll just edit it out of the video.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Well, that'll happen probably quite often. Well, because we had technical difficulties, we can just pretend you could just stop moving and we'll set up, his screen froze.

And so moving on to the next question. But before we do that,

I just wanna make a quick comment. When I say that Calvinism is biblical and that you cannot avoid it, it's right there in your face.

I understand that there are people who don't feel that way. And so what we're not saying is that because you're not a

Calvinist, you're not a Christian. We understand that there are honest, open, rigorous debates about not only the philosophical assumptions that go into these arguments, but even the biblical texts themselves.

And so I would encourage people to avoid cage -stage Calvinism, right? You can have a high regard for God, his sovereignty, his nature, but also engage in those sorts of discussions with as 1

Peter 3, verse 15 tells us, with gentleness and respect. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. All right, so someone was asking in the chat, but it was my next question.

Okay, so you're a Calvinist, check. So do you believe in free will? What do you say when someone says, well, do we have free will?

Now we open the can of worms and we get into the juicy stuff, I suppose, right? A lot of people are interested in this, so go for it.

So historically Calvinists, a lot of Calvinists will say, well, we don't believe in free will, or at least that's the assumption that Calvinists don't believe in free will.

Or they talk just about the bondage of the will. But I believe there is a brand of free will that Calvinism historically has embraced.

It doesn't always call it by any particular term, but in modern discussions, it is typically known as compatibilism.

And I think it's enshrined in things like the Westminster Confession of Faith and other documents like that.

Hasn't always been called that. But ever since Jonathan Edwards wrote a book, well, it's interesting, because historically a lot of the

Calvinistic view on free will somewhat derives from maybe a mythology created around Martin Luther's book called

Bondage of the Will. And then it's interesting that along a couple hundred years later, along comes

Jonathan Edwards and writes a similar book called The Freedom of the Will. And I think

Edwards did advance the discussion further than Martin Luther did, or Calvin for that matter, or really anyone else in the reformed tradition, because I think he grappled with the questions in ways that no one really had at that point.

But essentially he defines free will or freedom of the will as a person acting upon their strongest desires.

And that when we act in an unrestrained way or an uncoerced way upon our strongest desires at the moment of choosing, then we can say that that choice is freely made.

And so that opens up a lot of questions as to how to unpack all that, but essentially you could define

Calvinistic freedom of the will as the ability to make unrestrained choices that are in accord with the strongest desires that you would have as a human being.

That's a simple way of putting it. So the question is, well, what sorts of desires do human beings have?

Well, in our fallen state, all of our desires are tainted by sin.

And so we're corrupted. And in that sense, our will is corrupted so that the only kinds of choices, especially when we think about spiritual choices or moral choices, they can only be corrupted because they can only proceed from a heart of an unregenerate person who is corrupted.

And it's the only way to make it. And another way of defining those kinds of choices is that they're choices that don't really bring glory to God.

In other words, I think what Paul says in Romans 3 .23, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I think that is defining sin as that which does not magnify God's glory or honor

His glory through who He is as the perfect moral being, and therefore our conformance to Him and to His glory.

So when you say that we hold to compatibilism, what are you saying with regards to what is compatible?

So what I would say is that that version of free will that we always act upon our strongest desires, even when they are constrained, because sometimes we do make choices that are somewhat constrained or coerced.

And so in essence, we would be less free in one sense, and we can talk about what that looks like.

But in either case, that notion of freedom is compatible with the idea that ultimately

God determines everything that unfolds in history, including our choices. Right, so right there.

So that's important because when someone says, for example, well, if compatibilism is just determinism, you're still determined, as though it's like the

Calvinists will say, yes, we affirm determinism, but it's compatible with the sort of freedom.

So why don't we talk about the other side of the coin then? So we have compatibilistic view of freedom, namely that determinism is compatible with human freedom and moral responsibility, right?

Yes. Is that okay? And then we have libertarian freedom. How do you define libertarian freedom? Well, it might be useful to even back up further because when you're talking about determinism, there are different brands of determinism too, and there's what some people refer to as hard determinism, which in my mind is essentially no different than what is called fatalism.

And so, and this is important to point out because a lot of people think that the determinism, the

Calvinism embraces is a hard form of determinism, which is essentially fatalism.

And fatalism is the idea that what will be, will be, and there's nothing we can do about it. It doesn't matter what you choose.

It doesn't matter what you do or what you say or what choice you might make as a human being. Everything is fated and so it doesn't matter.

Well, that's a false notion of Calvinism. That would be a form of hard determinism. And so we reject that, right?

And all Calvinists have rejected that. Some hyper -Calvinists have gone in that direction, but the reality is, is there really very few are hyper -Calvinists in history.

There's a handful. No. There are a handful running around on the internet too. Yes, yes. There are probably more of them on the internet than those that are actually thinking intelligent

Calvinists writing books on the subject. But anyway, so libertarianism is on the other hand and libertarianism is, you know, basically is indeterministic.

In other words, freedom for a libertarian is choices that cannot be determined sufficiently by anything outside of the agent making that choice.

Okay, so basically you can't talk about freedom unless it is indeterministic.

So that's the first plank of libertarian free will. The second plank is that that then means that one can make alternative choices under the same set of circumstances.

So you can have circumstances X and you could choose

A or B, right? Under compatibilism, if you have circumstance

A, you're always gonna, it's always going to lead to choice A. The only way you would have choice

B is if the circumstances were B, right? And so the prior circumstances up to the point of choosing always corresponds to the kinds of choices that people will make.

Whereas in libertarianism, it didn't matter. You could have any kind of preconditions prior to the choices being made and you could make a whole variety of different choices that have no bearing on what might determine those choices or could possibly determine those choices.

So it's indeterministic in that regard. Yeah, so does this have any bearing on the whole conditional ability versus categorical ability with regards to the nature of the freedom we're talking about or is that a different topic?

So when we talk about the categorical ability to do otherwise, that all things being equal or if everything preceding the moment of choice was exactly the same, we are free, as you said, to still have a wide range of options.

That's categorical ability to do otherwise is typically associated with the libertarian view.

Whereas the conditional ability to do otherwise is that I could have done otherwise if I had wanted to do otherwise.

Yes, exactly. So is that what you're touching on in your description there? Right, and if circumstances had been such that I would have wanted to do otherwise, right?

So somebody, let's just give a practical example. Somebody comes up to you on the street and says, can

I please have your money? Well, you might look at that person and see that they're in need and they're whatever.

And you're like, sure, I'll have compassion on this person. I'll give you money and I wanna do that. Well, you can find yourself in a similar situation where somebody puts a gun to your head on the street and says, give me all your money.

Well, you might not want to give them your money, though you may do so, but you did so in a constrained kind of way.

And so, you can see how there might be different scenarios where you might make a similar choice or make the same choice, but under different conditions.

And so, if you had true libertarian free will, somebody could put a gun to your head and say, give me all your money.

And you're like, yeah, okay, well, maybe I will. And nothing constrains you one way or the other to make one choice or the other.

And I think the reality is that that fails by experience when you really analyze it because people don't make choices that way.

We always make choices for reasons and those reasons are sufficient for the choices that we want to make.

And they determine our desires. And I think scripture is far more in tune with that notion than the idea that we can just choose at random almost.

And it really, libertarian free will begins to really push up very close to choices being arbitrary because there's not sufficient reasons for why one might make one choice over another.

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna ask a question that is, it tends to be a hard question for some people to articulate because of, well, let me ask it.

So on Calvinism, we believe that God decrees everything that comes to pass, right? Yes. Decrees whatsoever comes to pass, right?

So if we act in accordance with our nature, are we really free since God determined our nature to be the way that it is?

And so we're gonna act in accordance with the nature that God gave us. So in what sense are we really free?

I mean, is the whole distinction between the categorical and the conditional distinctions, are those relevant at that point?

How would you respond to something like that? Well, first of all, we need to recognize that though God determines our choices,

He never coerces us to act against our will. So that would be another misunderstanding of what

Calvinism teaches. People have this idea that, well, if God determined my choices, well, then it must mean

He has to coerce me. Well, there's never any sense in scripture that God coerces anyone to act against their will.

A great example of that is the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. We read over and over again.

And in fact, it's about 19 or 20 times that we read of Pharaoh's heart being hardened in between about Exodus 5 through chapter 16, somewhere in there.

Yeah, about 10 chapters. We see this situation during the

Exodus where Pharaoh's heart is hardened. Sometimes the scripture says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

Other times it says that God hardened his heart. Well, which is it? Did God do it or did Pharaoh do it? Or did God do it at one point and Pharaoh do it at another point?

But God makes it very clear to Moses. He says, I am going to harden his heart. And yet we see at the same time that Pharaoh hardens his own heart.

And so God in the mystery of his providence, ensures that Pharaoh's heart would be hardened, but not by bypassing

Pharaoh's own will. And so God always uses secondary means to achieve his sovereign purposes.

Generally speaking, that is. Sometimes he acts in direct providential ways, what we might call extraordinary providences, for example, in miracles and things like that.

But generally speaking, when it comes to human actions, we are always the immediate cause of our choices and God is a remote cause.

God is a primary cause, but we are the secondary cause. And in no way, when

God is a primary cause, does he ever coerce us to act in ways that would be against our own will.

So we always act in ways that are according to our own strongest desires. And those happen to coincide with God's determined or decreed purpose.

So you would say that God is the remote cause, he's the primary cause, we are the secondary cause, but within that secondary causation, what is preserved is the sufficient freedom for moral responsibility.

Yes, yes. Because moral responsibility in scripture is tied to two notions. Number one, it's tied to the fact that the moral law is innately placed within our own hearts.

We see this in Romans two, for example, that God has written the law in our hearts and therefore our consciences bear witness to good and evil within ourselves.

We know what is good, we know what is evil. Unfortunately, we tend to suppress what is good through our evil.

Nonetheless, we understand, we have an innate knowledge of good and evil. So that's the first condition for moral responsibility.

The second condition is that we always act according to the intentions of our hearts.

And so moral responsibility in scripture is always tied to the intentions, right? Jesus says it's out of the mouth that we speak, blasphemies and murder and so forth.

This is why when he addressed sin, he didn't just address actions, he addressed the heart. He said, if you lust after a woman, it's as if you've already committed adultery because sin begins with the intentions of the heart.

And so when the intentions are evil, then we are morally culpable for those intentions.

Okay, all right. So let's move into some of the perceived problems with Calvinism.

These are some more challenges that people raise and see if we could address them. And again, there are a bunch of other questions.

I mean, when we say that, well, let me leave that. Well, I'll make you revisit the question you just addressed.

I'll make sure I won't do that. So, okay, so here's the question. And this is a question that often comes up. How does the

Calvinist reconcile or defend the compatibility of determinism with the notion of freedom and moral responsibility?

So we've defined what compatibilism is, okay? How would you defend or reconcile that?

Now, I'm gonna make this point, and you know this, but it's for the audience. The way you reconcile it personally is not necessarily the way other

Calvinists might, right? So we could affirm God's sovereignty and we could affirm man's freedom and moral responsibility, but how metaphysically that plays out,

Calvinists actually lie on different lines of the spectrum there. So you personally, when someone asks you this question, how do you reconcile this?

How do you approach that question? I know it's very difficult. Yeah, I typically don't go to a philosophical explanation at that point, but I just look at scripture and I see several instances where you see both

God and human actions side -by -side. Some good examples of that would be, for example, in Acts chapter two, where Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost, and I'm just moving to that passage in my

Bible. So I don't get it wrong, but Peter's preaching and he's talking about the death of Christ.

And he says, men of Israel, this is Acts chapter two, verse 22, says, men of Israel, listen to these words,

Jesus, the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which

God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, right? He's showing that they have culpable knowledge of Jesus's claims to being

Messiah and God attested to that through miracles and so forth. He says, this man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

So it's interesting that in that verse, Peter is basically affirming what I believe is a compatibilistic explanation of a single event, which is the crucifixion of Christ.

So on the one hand, he's saying this man was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, and yet you were the ones that nailed him to the cross by hands of godless men.

We see a similar passage in Acts chapter four, where the church is gathered together to pray and they're praying to God.

And they say, for truly in this city, we're gathered together against thy holy servant,

Jesus, whom you did anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the

Gentiles and peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

So here you see these men that are mentioned, Herod and Pontius Pilate, the

Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, specific individuals who were predestined by God's purpose to do whatever his hand had purposed them to do.

And so, their actions are evolved, God's determination is involved.

And we see that both of them are set side by side and there's even moral culpability assigned to those individuals because they are considered godless, at least as Peter describes them in chapter two.

So that assumes that they had godless motivations. They had evil motivations for what they did and they bear responsibility for that.

So I mean, we could multiply a lot of those kinds of passages. So a lot of times you see passages that just focus on human responsibility, right?

Or even human freedom for that matter. And then you have other passages that may focus just on God's sovereignty, but you have a lot of these interesting passages where you see them side by side.

And that, to me, I believe lends itself to understanding these things in a compatibilistic way.

Just real quick - And I think it's important, let me just back up there, because I think it's important to recognize that we don't go to scripture to look for a model of free will because the

Bible doesn't really give us one. And so we can formulate logical ideas and test them against what scripture would say.

And I suggest that compatibilism is far more compatible, you know, excuse the term, with what scripture lays out for us than libertarian free will accounts of free will would be.

All right, very good. Thank you for that. Just real quick, folks, I see some activity in the comments. If you have a question, type it in and we'll definitely address them.

It's very helpful if you label your question as question so that I can differentiate them from the other comments.

So I do see some interesting discussion going on there. And so if you form it into a question, we can try our best to address that.

All right, so let's move on to my next question here. And my next question is, what are the sufficient and necessary conditions for moral responsibility?

And how does a Calvinistic understanding meet those conditions? Yeah, I think

I tried to address this a little bit earlier in a comment I made. I think there are two conditions.

Number one, that we have an innate knowledge of good and evil that God has placed on our hearts.

That's Romans two. I think that'd be the first condition. And the second condition is that scripture always ties moral responsibility to the intentions of our hearts.

So that when we purpose to do evil, it didn't matter that God also has determined that that takes place.

Because we ourselves have purposed it. We don't disagree with it, right? We don't resist those desires.

And therefore we are culpable for them. Sure. So I wouldn't, I don't believe it's necessary to tie moral culpability to the ability to choose otherwise.

God is not morally culpable because He can only choose what is good, right?

If moral culpability were tied to the ability to choose both good and evil, well, then

God can never be morally responsible for anything He does because He can only do good. It's not even possible for Him to do evil in any scenario.

Right. And so if libertarian free will is necessary for moral culpability, well, then

God cannot have any kind of moral culpability. Sure. And so that alone indicates to me that it's not necessary for moral responsibility.

Okay, all right, thank you. All right, Mr. Calvinist, I'm gonna give you a curve ball here, okay? I'm just kidding.

And by the way, I just noticed that my phone is telling me my battery is going dead. I don't know if I have -

Oh, no. I don't know if I have - Do you have a charger? I don't know if I have one in here and I don't know where to plug it in.

But yeah, I don't think I have much longer. I don't know how long we're supposed to go. That's okay, that's okay.

We usually do like about an hour, but if you don't have an hour, we can move straight to the audience question and take some questions there so that they don't feel left out.

Sure, sure. And no worries, that happens, that happens. My laptop almost died. Almost broke my laptop today.

I got home from work and I swiveled my backpack to my left side of my shoulder and the laptop flew off and smashed onto the ground.

Like the screen's not cracked, but there's a couple of dents here and there. So it happens.

All right, so let's see here. Now I got a, that's what's up there, it doesn't exist. Okay, let's see here.

Okay, so one question is here. You addressed this, but perhaps you can just address it real quick.

How do you have a free will under Calvinism? Yeah, it's just, it depends on how you define free will.

Oh, now your volume is off. Can you hear me? Yeah. I can't hear. You can't hear me?

Oh, whoops. There we go, one second. Can you hear me? Okay, now

I can hear you. Go ahead, sorry about that. Yeah, no, I think it depends on how you define free will. If you define free will as an unconstrained choice that corresponds to your strongest desire at the moment of choosing, then you're free.

The problem is that there's a sense in which we are both free and in bondage at the same time. So even though we're free to make the choices according to our strongest desires, what is it that determines our strongest desires?

It is the condition of our hearts. And so as unregenerate human beings, because we are corrupted by sin, then we are in bondage to sin, as Jesus said.

We are slaves to sin. Then that means all of our choices as unregenerate human beings are going to be corrupted sinful choices.

And unless we have the grace of God that changes our hearts and enables us to make choices that are truly

God glorifying, we cannot make such choices. We will always want to choose that which is corrupted or corrupted by our tainted evil hearts.

Thank you for, thank you, Redefine Living. I guess that's his screen name. He says a really nice comment over here.

I will say I have enjoyed your presuppositional apologetic method. Well, thank you very much. I had to include that little one there. All right.

So let's see here. We've got a couple here. Let's see here.

Let me see. Oh yeah, here. That's a good one. It's a comment here by Jerichia Hunter.

He says, look, I love my Calvinistic brothers, but if you say only Calvinism is true, then logically it would follow that everyone who is not a

Calvinist is in a false religion. Is that your claim? Is that the claim of Calvinist? That if you're not a

Calvinist, then you're in a false religion. No, that would say that Calvinism needs to be a sufficient condition for salvation.

And I don't believe that to be true. As long as somebody understands that they are a sinner in need of Christ and that they need to repent of their sin and trust

Christ for salvation, it doesn't matter whether they think God has determined that or not.

As long as they meet that condition, having turned from their sin and turning toward Christ, recognizing that apart from Christ, there is no salvation, then you are a

Christian. I love, there's a great anecdotal story between George Whitefield, who was a great

Calvinist and John Wesley, who is probably the strongest proponent of an

Arminian brand of theology up until the modern time. I mean, it goes back to Jacob Arminius, but John Wesley has probably influenced far more people than Arminius has.

And Whitefield and Wesley were good friends and they had bitter debates on Calvinism versus Arminianism.

So one day someone came to George Whitefield and said, you know, Mr. Whitefield, what do you think?

Do you think we'll see Mr. Wesley in heaven? You know, and of course he's hoping for the no answer.

And so Whitefield says, no, I don't think we will see him in heaven. And this guy thought, oh yeah, great, right.

So, you know, Wesley surely can't be a Christian because he's not a Calvinist.

And so Whitefield retorted, he says, the reason why we won't see Mr. Wesley in heaven is because he will be so close to the throne of God and we will be so far away from the throne of God that we won't be able to see him.

And so that's sort of an anecdotal thing, but I think it shows that, you know,

Arminians can be godly men. We know many godly preachers and Christians throughout history who did not agree with Calvinism.

And I think it's foolish to suggest that such people were not believers. Yeah, they're saved, they're just wrong.

I'm just kidding. That's right, that's right. I'm just kidding. All right, so here's another question.

So how far do you take man's depravity? Is everything that we want to do evil all the time or are all our characteristics damaged in some way by the fall?

Yeah, total depravity is never defined as absolute depravity. And I think the word total is a misnomer there and it has lent itself to be interpreted that way.

Total depravity means that we are thoroughly depraved in every aspect of our being, in our mind, our will, our emotions and so forth, our affections, desires of our hearts and so forth.

And so it doesn't mean that we are as bad as we possibly could be. And there are certainly degrees of sin, we know that.

And Jesus himself indicates that. It's worse for people in Chorazin and Bethsaida than it will be for you people.

And so there's indications that there are levels of severity of sin and severity of punishment.

And so, yeah, we're not as bad as we can be, but we are bad enough that we can do nothing about it.

In other words, scripture says we are dead in trespasses and sins. It's not like we're sick, right?

It's not as if we have some little tiny island of righteousness that we can run to if we need it.

No, we are corrupted in every aspect of our being in such a way that we are enslaved to those corruptions that apart from the effective efficacious grace of God, we could not do otherwise.

And that's why we need Christ. That's why we need the gospel. Now, this is not a question, it's a comment, but maybe you could address it.

I was determined to not be a Calvinist. Now, I don't know this person. Maybe they're saying that as kind of a, to show that perhaps

Calvinism is incoherent or something like that, or it makes kind of arguing about it useless.

But how would you address that? You're going back and forth with someone about Calvinism and you're showing them the scripture verses and they say, well, if what you say is true,

I guess God just determined me to not hold to your position. Well, that right there typically presupposes that Calvinism is fatalism, right?

And so it doesn't matter that I'm not a Calvinist, God predetermined it, and so there's nothing I can do about it. But that's not what

Calvinism teaches. Calvinism teaches that God always works through means. And so you're not a

Calvinist because you haven't thought about it. You haven't thought carefully enough about what the Bible says and about what logic would tell you.

And therefore, that's your problem, not that God has determined that you weren't a Calvinist. And so the point is, is that God doesn't just bypass our minds.

He doesn't bypass our thoughts, our desires, our thinking, right?

He gave us brains. He gave us an intellect and we're to use those things to bring glory to Him.

And so He never determines the course of our lives apart from our own actions.

And the content of God's decree is unknown to us. So it may very well be an aspect of God's decree that you would be convinced of Calvinism through our loving brotherly relationship and talking about it over scripture.

That's right. So that's an important point there. Okay, we're almost done.

You're doing great, by the way. Thank you so much. Let's see here. Okay, so redefine living says

Matthew 16, 24. It says, then Jesus said to His disciples, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross and follow me.

And He follows it up with, that's a choice. And so what, there's a fallacy in there, but perhaps you can draw it out.

Why wouldn't a Calvinist flinch at a verse like that? Right, because we are called to repent and believe.

We are called to do these things. The question is, how are we able to do such things? Are we doing them of our own autonomous abilities or are we able to do them because God has enabled us to do so, sufficiently enabled us to do so by His grace.

And so, again, once again, God's sovereignty does not bypass human choices, right?

Rather, it enables us to make choices that correspond to His determinations for our lives.

And so, He does not bypass means. And this is why most people who object to Calvinism, tend to caricature

Calvinism as fable -ism. And it could, nothing could be further from the truth. Calvinism is not fable -ism.

And so, God always accomplishes His purpose through means, through secondary means.

Okay, very good. We'll move quickly before your phone dies, okay? Yes. Here's the next question.

What you were explaining earlier on sounds like Molinism. What would be the difference between what your guest is,

I guess you're asking me, is describing and what a Molinist believes. So, what's a quick difference between Calvinism and Molinism?

Oh, goodness. Yeah, there's not a quick answer there. And you could assume that the person knows what

Molinism is. So, you can give a concise answer. What's a distinct characteristic of Calvinism that wouldn't be a distinct feature of Molinism?

Well, distinct feature of Calvinism is that we don't believe in libertarian free will. And so, Molinism tries to combine determinism with libertarian free will, and they have to take some strange turns to get there.

And the bottom line is, is that Molinism still can't give an account of how

God could possibly know what our choices would be if they are truly libertarianly free.

Because if they are, then at the point of choosing, we could always have chosen differently. And how could

God have known that if we are truly free? God couldn't know.

And that's why I think open theism has this consistent view of libertarian free will, even more consistent than Arminianism, but they do so by denying that God has any true foreknowledge of how to do more choices.

And so, Molinism tries to bridge the gap between those things and I just don't think it's successful.

Okay, all right. Well, your audio seems a little strange here.

I'm gonna try something real quick. Yeah, it's probably on its last legs.

Maybe you can answer one last question and then I'll try to give a stab at the last questions myself as you probably froze up.

No, he's gone. Uh -oh, okay. I guess his phone, well, you're still there.

How much percent do you have? I can hear you, but you sound like someone from another planet.

Okay, I sound not good. Do I sound a little better now? No. Ah, okay, all right.

Well, unfortunately then, I guess that's the end of the, well, we'll have to close it off here, unfortunately, but I would like to thank you very much.

Sorry that I don't know what's happening right now. Let me try something real quick. All right, can you hear me now?

Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, you're still there. Yeah, watch the stat.

Oh, let's see here. Okay, so unfortunately, our guest is gone.

Not technical difficulties. His phone was about to die. So let's see here.

I can't get to all of them. We're at the top of the hour. Okay, to be in the middle, like Molinism.

Okay, all right. Sorry about that, guys. Losing track of some of the questions here.

Let's see. Here, I'll take one more question here. Okay, so Kyperion Burian says, do you think there's a problem in saying that God causes sin and or evil?

I think the problem comes if you do not clarify and qualify what you mean by that.

And Scott made mention of God as the primary cause and we as the secondary cause.

And that even as we having secondary causation, sufficient freedom and moral responsibility is preserved in that dynamic.

So in a sense, God causes all things that come to pass, but it's not the type of sense that makes

God at fault when you make those proper distinctions. Now, some people might not agree with that and that's fine.

But if you avail yourself of the literature and the explanations of how reformed thinkers explain this,

I think, in my opinion, I think it's a sufficient explanation. It's philosophically cogent and I think it's biblically defensible.

Okay, all right, let's see here. I'll take a couple more. Let's see here.

If there are any, a lot of... Someone said, Scott sounds like he's chewing metal. Yeah, yeah, okay,

I think that's it. That's the end of the things there. Listen, guys, thank you so much for listening. Again, I just want to direct people to Scott's book,

What About Free Will? He goes into much more detail. I would imagine some of the questions that you're thinking, he probably addresses somewhere in his book,

What About Free Will? And if you have questions with regards to God's relationship to evil, you definitely want to check out his book,

What About Evil? And I think it's a thick guy, right? It's a pretty thick one, but he goes into some great detail.

And I think folks will have to avail themselves of that. It would be super helpful.

So I'd like to thank Scott. Sorry that his phone passed away. I definitely know the struggle as you guys, if you were watching the previous episode where I had some technical difficulties, hey, it happens.

So I hope you guys found this useful. I want to remind people real quick as well. Those of you who are interested in learning presuppositional apologetics, you can sign up for my online course at Presupp, Presupp, my goodness.

You can sign up at Revealed Apologetics. I'm gonna give you my email. Don't sign up there.

You can sign up at revealedapologetics .com. And there is a menu which says

Presupp You. And when you scroll down, you can click in and see the options that are available. We have folks signing up.

I'm super excited. I'm almost complete with the recorded content and it will be going out in a timely fashion.

I'm super, super excited. So definitely encourage folks to check that out.

Of course, the classes are charged. So by joining the classes, not only will you learn presuppositional apologetics and join in others discussing the content of the course, but your financial contribution also helps.

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But other than that, I super appreciate everyone who listens, whether you're a Christian, whether you're an atheist, whether you are a

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So that's it for today. Thanks again, take care and God bless. Take care, bye.