William Lane Craig vs. James R. White: Calvinist Philosopher Weighs In

Introduction to the Craig-White Debate and the Author of Sin Objection

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have another guest with me, a returning guest, Guillaume Bignon, who is, I always introduce him as the French Calvinist philosopher.

If reincarnation were true, he is the living reincarnation of John Calvin. I'm just kidding. Yeah, so I have Guillaume Bignon on to address something that is very much related to the discussion that Dr. White and James White and William Lane Craig had, where on the Unbelievable show, they discussed the topic of Calvinism and Molinism, which best explains or has a response to the problem of evil, and what happened in that discussion.

Again, it got a lot of attention, and I had Dr. White previously on to talk about his interaction there, and I think folks should check that conversation out as well. But there was a common complaint about the discussion between Dr. Craig and Dr. White that I want to help address by having Guillaume on to discuss, and that is that during the discussion, Dr. White took the offensive and kind of drilled Dr. Craig on the grounding objection, right?

You guys who've listened to that interaction know what I'm talking about. And while that was happening, there was not much time for Dr. White to really unpack his own position with respect to how Calvinism answers the problem of evil and why it's a better answer.

So to kind of piggyback off that discussion, I have invited Guillaume Bignon to actually address that specific issue. So this entire episode, with some minor exceptions, we're gonna try to tackle, or he's gonna tackle, not me, I'm the interviewer.

He's gonna try to tackle the issue of Calvinism. Does Calvinism make God the author of sin? And so this is a very popular objection, and so hopefully Guillaume can unpack that for us. And hey, before I invite him on, I want to, I've been reading a lot of comments.

If people wonder why I don't engage in comments, it's not because I'm ignoring people. I'm super busy. So I have, I'm a father of three little kids. We just moved, my family just moved into our new home.

I'm a full-time school teacher. And so I just, I read comments, but I don't interact as much. So please don't take that as me not wanting to engage some of the awesome questions that are coming in. But also what I've observed in some of the comments is really kind of just, how can I explain this?

From both sides, whether it's the Calvinist or the Molinist or whatever, there's always this idea that the Molinist has this nefarious agenda, or the Calvinist has this agenda that we're just trying to deceive people.

And listen, these are really difficult topics and they're pretty in depth. And so I hope in the comment section on this video that we show some charity, like, hey, I'm a Calvinist. I'm not trying to convince everyone that Calvinism is true.

I believe it's true. And I think that there are folks who can explain, give good arguments for the position and answer objections. And that's it. If you're not a Calvinist, I don't hate you. I love you if you're a brother in Christ.

And so let's engage in the comments and the debates with gentleness and respect, as 1 Peter 3, verse 15 tells us, okay? So we need to learn how to disagree charitably. Otherwise, everyone's just gonna be calling each other heretics and you're not really gonna get anywhere.

So I hope that that's the nature of the comments in the comment section of this video, okay? All right, well, without further ado, let me invite my friend Guillaume Benyong on the screen with me. How are you doing, Guillaume?

Hey Eli, good to see you. Doing great. Good to see you as well. I'm happy that you're on and I know that you're a busy guy too. You have like 20 kids, right? Is that how many kids you have?

I don't know. Soon, maybe. No, just five of them, but they can be busy.

Just five, just five. So, okay. So your family's doing good?

Everything's going well? Yes, wonderfully well. So we've also moved out of New York. So we are a little bit more of a peaceful environment and the kids have been loving it, so.

Excellent, excellent. Well, we did have you on a while ago to do a kind of a two-parter, which were like over two hours, I think. We're not gonna do that tonight, but where you had interacted with Leighton Flowers, Tim Stratton, and Braxton Hunter over there at Trinity Radio.

And that was very fun. And we got into a lot of issues there and I think you did an excellent job and there was some great feedback from those discussions. And so I'm really happy to have you on tonight to tackle this really thorny and controversial topic.

So, are you ready? As ready as I'll get, so. Okay, okay. So, I'm gonna begin by asking this question, okay? Do you shake in your boots? I don't even know if you wear boots, but do you shake in your boots when a non-Calvinist, whether it's an Arminian, whether it's a Molinist, or, you know, whoever, when they say, Guillaume, Calvinism makes God the author of sin.

And so you shouldn't be a Calvinist because look at the ramifications of your view. Is that something that causes you as a Calvinist to say, oh my goodness, or is it kind of like, well, let's talk about that.

How do you respond to something like that? Well, I should be shaking in my boots if the objection comes from Dr. William Lane Craig, because he's a really smart guy and a very good philosopher. But yeah, no, the objection definitely is something that we should talk about.

Like you said, let's talk about this. And I guess that's what we're here for. But the objection in itself doesn't give me great pause. There are some arguments against Calvinism that are important to be taken seriously.

And this is why I did much of my work on that topic, trying to address some of the most important objections against the Calvinist view. One of those objections is God's involvement in evil. So I'm looking forward to telling you what I think about the objections.

All right, well, what I think is missed in a lot of these discussions is really defining our terms and kind of explaining and expanding what one means when they say that Calvinism makes God the author of evil.

Why don't you, or the author of sin, or however they would phrase it. But what I don't see happening is people stopping and kind of unpacking that, because it's not as simple as just what the phrase kind of appears, right?

How would you unpack and delineate maybe the different senses in which one could understand that phrase, the author of sin?

Yeah, so this is gonna be the very classical response from the philosopher. Do you agree with this? And the response is always, well, it depends. It depends what you mean. So tell me what you mean, and then we'll be able to dive deep and try to assess in which sense we might be agreeing and which sense we might be disagreeing.

So for the authorship of sin, we're gonna very quickly land on that question of like, does it mean something specific that we need to be told, or do we just evaluate that claim at face value? Just does Calvinism make God the author of sin?

So it's gonna be one first stage of analyzing the argument. It's gonna be to say, which sense do we have in view? And are there acceptable senses of the phrase author of sin? And are there inacceptable senses?

So to assess whether we have a good argument against Calvinism, we're gonna need something like, let me clarify maybe what we need in order to have a successful argument, right? Let's set the stage. In order to have a successful argument against Calvinism, we're gonna need something like this.

We're gonna need to find a proposition P that's entailed by Calvinism, right? To say Calvinism entails P, but in fact, P is false. Therefore, Calvinism is false. That's gonna be the structure that we really want to get in order to have a successful argument.

It's a standard form of an argument. It's called modus tollens. It's Calvinism entails something, but that something is false. Therefore, Calvinism is false. Okay. Okay? So that's the whole point.

I don't feel very comfortable right now. You're using way too much philosophy. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Hey, philosophy is important. That's important. I'm just messing around. Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'll try not to troll. I don't know. Is God inappropriately causing you to troll me for the conversation? No, maybe. I'm just a puppet. I'm just a puppet. That is evil. But anyway, I think, you know, I don't need to use like even letter propositions or what have you, but basically we need to see that Calvinism entails something and that that something is false and therefore Calvinism is false.

That's what we need. And so the whole game now is going to be, can you find that something, right? And this setting of the stage is showing you a little bit how heavy the burden is on the proponent of this argument because it's important that we set the conversation in a proper context.

It's an argument against Calvinism, right? So it's a positive argument to establish that Calvinism is false. And this is how Dr. Craig intended it in the debate as an argument to say, no, the Calvinist view is false.

It's problematic because God is the author of sin on Calvinism, but in fact, God is not the author of sin. Therefore Calvinism is false. And so in the context of an argument against Calvinism, the burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of the objector here.

So in order to have a successful argument, it's the objector who's going to need to establish that we have this. So the arguments as I've laid it out now is logically valid, right? So we have, if Calvinism entails something and that something is false, then it follows that Calvinism is false.

So we have a valid argument, but now we can appreciate just how heavy the burden is going to be on the shoulders of the person who tries to refute Calvinism, because they're going to have that double burden of showing that they've identified something that showing us that it's following from Calvinism, right?

Like, does this actually follow from anything that we affirm? Like, are we committed to this basically? And once we've established that, now you need to establish that that in fact is false, right? So if you do both of those things, then you have a good argument and Calvinism is refuted, but you need to do both of those things.

And so we're going to look at a number of candidates of something that may be found to be problematic with Calvinism. And in each case, we'll see, like, is this actually something that falls from Calvinism?

And then if it does, is it something that is shown to be false? And is it a reason to reject Calvinism basically? So with that framework, we have the pure rules for what would make a good argument. And then we can see all of the different applications, the different attempts at phrasing this argument.

And I can give you the good, what I take to be really good Calvinist responses to show that there is in fact, no successful argument against Calvinism based upon God's authorship of sin or evil.

Now, before we get into that though, I'm using my prophetic giftings. I was raised in a Pentecostal church, by the way. I don't know if people know my background. I have the gift of prophecy right now, foresight.

I can already anticipate before you made a differentiation between the different ways in which the phrase author of sin can be understood or is God responsible for sin? And a lot of people, when they hear Calvinists say that, their antennas go up and they think, up, here comes the word salad.

Here comes the sidestepping of the issue. Everyone knows when we say that God, Calvinism makes God the author of sin. We all know what that means. And so here comes the Calvinist, especially the philosopher now is going to use his magical philosophical language so that he can kind of justify.

Before we move into the main gist of your response, how would you address something like that? Because I could anticipate someone.

Saying something along those lines. Well, I don't know that we all know what is meant by that, but my best response is to say that we're not going to dodge anything here. On the contrary, I'm not saying it depends what you mean so that we can brush it off and forget about it.

Just on the contrary, so that we together can dive in and try to assess, okay, what's the claim here? What are the possible meanings? What are some of the problems that might be in there? And look at all of those problems squarely in the face.

So it's really not an attempt to dodge anything. It's an attempt to be careful about what the claim is and to see if there are some good response for whichever version of that claim you want to press.

So I don't think there's anything dodgy here. On the contrary, we're going to try to cover all of those. Okay. All right.

Well, thank you for that. I hope folks really get that. I mean, Guillaume doesn't work for me. I don't work for Guillaume. We don't work for some master Calvinist CEO pulling the strings to make us say stuff so that you could believe what we say.

There's no conspiracy here. I hope that makes sense. We do need to define our terms. This happens a lot too when folks talk about free will. So we won't get into that just yet. But when someone says, oh, we all know what free will means, or Calvinism says there's no free will.

It's like, well, we need to understand what those terms mean, right? So defining terms, I think is super important, especially when we're dealing with the whole author of sin objection. So why don't you, Guillaume, unpack what you were going to say.

How would you respond to this in detail? Calvinism makes God the author of sin in a way that is reprehensible. It makes God evil as this was brought up in the discussion. Yeah, exactly.

So that's the claim here. So we're going to look at the structure of the argument and what different meanings that could take and what different articulation of that argument we can find. Before we do that, I'm going to be the philosopher who takes just a second to dive a little bit in the Bible.

And I'm not using those biblical texts necessarily as a positive argument in favor of Calvinism, although I think that some of them strongly suggest the Calvinist view. But it's just that the exercise we're about to do is to assess, is God inappropriately involved in evil on Calvinism?

And I want to have that exercise with a little bit of background in our minds of some of the things that the Bible says about God's involvement in evil. And I think that it's proper that when we try to distance God from evil, we don't do a stronger job at this than the Bible does.

So I've often said that we philosophers tend to defend God from his involvement in evil in ways that he's actually quite comfortable talking about his involvement in evil in the Bible. And we tend to defend him where he might not need much of a defense.

So just to put our conversations on the philosophy of the argument in perspective of some of the biblical things that are said, I just want to read some of the text, if you will, it out. So Isaiah 45 verses five to seven say, I am the Lord and there is no other.

Besides me, there is no God. I form light and I create darkness. I make well-being and I create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things, right? In Deuteronomy 32, 39, it says, I kill and make alive, I wound and I heal.

So it says, I do these things, right? In 1 Samuel chapter two, verse six, the Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down to Sheol and raises up. And then in Amos 3, six, the rhetorical question is asked, does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it?

So when we talk about God being the author of something bad or the author of evil, here the language is fairly direct, right? So does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it? Obviously this is a rhetorical question.

The answer is no, which means that when disaster comes to a city, the Lord has done it. Lamentations chapter three, verses 37, 38, who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord has commanded it. Is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and bad come?

And then there's the book of Job, which talks about all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him, Job, right? So Job 42, verse 11. So those scriptures, again, I'm not presenting necessarily here to say, well, if this is said in the Bible, it follows logically that Calvinism is true.

This is not the point that I'm raising here, but just to say, like, keep those in mind. As we try to defend God's hands from being dirtied by evil, he says all those things in the Bible that clearly suggest we're not too, let's say that the Calvinist is not in too much of a bad company when he makes strong claims about God's involvement in evil, that God determines evil.

Now, real quick. So Molinist would affirm all of those passages. So, and I like what you said. I think that was an appropriate thing for you to say that when you state these passages, you're not using that as an argument necessarily.

And this is very important because I think a lot of people run the risk in these debates of engaging in what some refer to as a proof text war, right? You just throw a proof text at someone. It's like, well, the Bible says this.

Well, the Bible says that. Well, the real question is what does it mean by that? And we need to kind of unpack that a little bit. So I appreciate your differentiation there between you stating the argument, I'm sorry, the scripture, so that we can have it in the back of our mind as you formulate your argument in just a moment here.

So I think that's important for folks to keep in mind.

Yeah, the Molinist, like you said, has resources in their view to affirm a pretty strong sense of divine providence because they do have both of those pillars of Molinism. You have libertarian free will on one hand, but you have middle knowledge.

So God knows what we would freely do in any circumstances. And he uses that middle knowledge to bring about lots of things, including things that are evil. So the Molinist has in that model, resources to affirm some pretty strong things about what God does.

Now, the fact that his model allows for it doesn't mean that every Molinist is going to say those very strong things. And in that debate between Dr. Craig and Dr. White, Dr. Craig seemed to try to really distance God from evil by saying he takes a fully hands-off approach.

I think that's a direct quote. God is hands-off on evil. So here again, there's resources in Dr. Craig's model of Molinism to say that God is not all that hands-off, but depending on what kind of a mood we're gonna catch the Molinist on, he's gonna use either libertarian free will or middle knowledge.

One of them is gonna say, well, God is really hands-off. The other one says, well, he really controls. So yes, I think that the best route for a Molinist facing all the texts that I've just read is to lean heavy on the middle knowledge part and a little bit less on the libertarian side.

But those texts are there, and I just want them to be in our minds as we discuss God's involvement in evil. The Bible says God does all those things.

Okay, excellent. Okay, so the Bible says it. Okay, who cares? The Molinist will say, I know the Bible says it. The real issue is what does the Bible mean by that? So for example, it's kind of like when you have the Calvinists and the Arminians and the Molinists all claiming that God is sovereign.

No, no, no, we hold the proper view of sovereignty. No, no, no, we hold the proper view of sovereignty. In reality, we all hold to a view of sovereignty. The real issue is what is the content of that term?

So you have the scripture references there. How would you unpack the defending that those scriptures, what they are intending to convey is what you as a Calvinist think is the case?

Well, I don't know that there's a whole lot more than I can say to get you from the plain meaning of the text to the Calvinist view. I think it's more of a cumulative case to say like, here are some of the things that are said, which model between Calvinism and Molinism best accounts for all of those things.

So I don't know that I can take any one text and tell you, well, this one, if true, logically entails Calvinism and there is no plausible Molinist interpretation of them. Again, all the ones that I've just cited are very strongly explaining that God is the one bringing about those things.

A smart Molinist is going to simply say, well, look, this is simply God's providential control in light of his middle knowledge. And despite the fact that humans have libertarian free will, God can have that kind of control.

And so I don't know that I can take any of them and bring them home, but I think it's a cumulative case between those and other biblical teachings. And then I have philosophical arguments against libertarianism itself.

So that's the pillar of Molinism that is libertarian free will, I think can be refuted by pretty solid arguments, biblically and philosophically. It's just that I can't take one of those texts and say, hey, Molinism is dead in the water because of this one, just one on its own.

All right, very good. So let's address the main question then. Calvinism makes God the author of sin. How is that not the case from our perspective?

Yeah, so the way that I respond to this claim is that I think the argument is half-baked. So we're gonna be heavy in the cooking language. You know, you're interviewing a French guy, I'm into food, so we're gonna be in the cooking language here.

I think the argument is half-baked and I'm going to suggest a number of different recipes to finish the baking, right? So if the argument is not fully fleshed out by the critic of Calvinism, I'm gonna try to finish the job for them and then show them in each of the ways that you can do it why that's still failing.

So what I've mapped out in my reading of the literature on this question is that there's really three strategies. And so I'm gonna be saying that there's gonna be three recipes to complete that baking.

And there's one that's gonna be foggy, another one that's ambitious, and another one that's timid. So that's gonna be three recipes to complete the baking of the half-baked arguments from evil against Calvinism.

So let's dive in the first recipe, which is the foggy. And so for me, the foggy recipe is when it's too blurry, like there's no telling really what is meant by the claim. And it is precisely the one that we had at face value during the Craig White debate, which is Calvinism makes God the author of sin.

And that is foggy because depending on what is meant by the phrase author of sin, the Calvinist is not even sure which premise of the argument he should deny. Remember there's premise one, we need to know that Calvinism entails this.

Premise two, that this thing is false, therefore Calvinism is false. And the Calvinist, depending on what is meant by author of sin, doesn't even know which premise one or two he needs to deny. And so we're gonna need to probe a little bit.

Author is clearly a metaphor here, right? So God is not an author typing at his keyboard, writing a story and he's not writing with a pencil. It's understood, it's uncontroversial that it's a metaphor.

It's one that certainly has lots of connotations and we're gonna try to tackle them, but it's a metaphor. And we need to be told, okay, what exactly do we have in view here? And so that's why you find Calvinist a bit divided on addressing the objection that Calvinism makes God the author of sin.

Just to mention a couple of important voices on that question, Calvin is pretty explicit that he says, no, God is not the author of sin. You find that in his writing. And so that's why a lot of people say, well, look, he's a Calvinist, he's a determinist.

He can't really coherently deny that God is the author of sin. So that's kind of a inconsistency on the part of Calvin allegedly, but Calvin is clear. No, he denies that God is the author of sin. Similarly, the Westminster Confession and the language that has been taken into the London Baptist Confession as well, those very Calvinist confessions of faith, both explicitly say that God is not the author of sin in their statements on providence.

So you have those voices saying, no, he's not. But my approach is gonna be, okay, wait a second. It depends what you mean. And this is a little bit the answer that Jonathan Edward provides. He says, I know that the phrase is supposed to mean something really bad, but you need to tell me a little bit.

What does it mean? Because author of sin could be intended to mean something that's pretty mild really. First of all, it could very well be a fair description of whatever we just read in the Bible. I mean, some of those that God says I did this.

Well, maybe that's what we mean by the author of sin. He's the author, he's the one who did this. He's the one who created calamity. He's the one who brought disaster into the city. So if that's what we mean, then the Calvinist says, okay, your problem is not with me, it's with the Bible.

But that's just one way of unpacking the phrase that would be innocent, in which case the Calvinist could say, okay, fine, Calvinism entails that, but that's not a problem, therefore Calvinism is not false.

So that's just one sense. And there are other acceptable senses. So for example, the author analogy, which is what it is, right? It's an analogy, it's a metaphor for God and his control of what happens in the world.

But the analogy of the author is something that some Calvinists have done quite a bit of work on and to say, yes, it's actually a pretty good metaphor for God. So you have a Parker staircase who has done his master's thesis on precisely that, the analogy of God as author.

And he's worked with Kevin Van Hooser. And I think that the idea that what they are trying to say here is that there's a sense in which God is writing the story of the world, right? And the fact that he's authoring it, that he's decreeing everything that happens, is not, doesn't mean that he's sinful.

And the phrase author of sin, we could see a very mild application to a human author writing a story that contains sin, right? So let's say on this analogy, again, think of J .R .R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings.

We would say that J .R .R. Tolkien is the author of Saron's sin, right? He's written it, but it obviously doesn't follow that Tolkien is himself sinful on that description. So obviously this is not to say that's all the Calvinist means when he says that God is authoring all that happens, but it's just to show that there's a perfectly innocent use of the phrase author of sin.

And so we need to be told what use do you have that's actually bad so that Calvinists would need to see if they're committed to it.

Okay, so quick question. And I don't want this to get off topic. Hopefully you can answer the question and then get back to the point you were making is that a lot of non-Calvinists are aware of the author writing a book analogy.

What is the common objection to that analogy? So some Calvinists will say, hey, this is a great analogy, right? And they use it literally the same example you use with J .R .R. Tolkien or whatever. What is a common objection to that analogy and why doesn't it work?

And then I'm gonna grab you back.

To continue your line of thinking. I don't wanna get you too off track. Sure, so it depends what you're objecting against, right? So an analogy is not an argument here. The analogy is just simply saying, hey, look, there are some similarities between two things and it's enlightening.

It's interesting to see those similarities. If that's all you're doing, there's no objection there. It's just gonna be a matter of taste. Like, do you like the analogy or don't you like it? The way that I just used it, bringing it here is simply to show that the phrase author of sin itself could have a very mild sense.

And if you forget about God for a second and just apply it to Tolkien and Sauron, Tolkien is the author of Sauron's evil, but obviously there's not real evil here. And nobody would say that Tolkien is evil for having been the author of evil in that sense.

So all I'm saying is that the use of the phrase author of evil can be mild. Now, immediately the objection could be, well, but the Calvinist God does much more than what Tolkien does here because he's not writing a fake story.

It's the real world and the Calvinist God is said to determine that people actually do evil in this world. To which I respond, yes, absolutely. The Calvinist God does much more than Tolkien does on that story.

All I'm doing is saying that the phrase author of sin could mean something that's absolutely unobjectionable. And so it's not going to do to just brandish like wave that phrase and say, well, because God is that, then he must be evil.

So we're gonna need to pull up our sleeves and actually find something concrete that God does on Calvinism that is both identified to say, it is in fact entailed by Calvinism that God does that. And also it's a problem, therefore Calvinism is false.

And shortly that, that's not gonna give us a good argument. So that's why the foggy recipe needs to, we need to go beyond this and to unpack a little bit more precisely, what do we mean by God is the author of sin?

And so this is where we're going to land on the two other recipes that I offer, the ambitious and the timid, because it's going to be attempts to provide meanings for the phrase author of sin and try to see if that gives us a good argument.

And basically in the neighborhood of that phrase, the real complaint of the non-Calvinist here is that God is bringing about evil, right? It's around that. And so there's two ways that we can complain about this, either that he brings about evil or about how he does so.

Right? So, and this is what I'm going to say that the ambitious recipe is the one that complains that the Calvinist God brings about evil. And the timid one is going to be complaining about how the Calvinist God brings about evil.

And the reason why I'm calling them ambitious and timid is the following. The ambitious recipe is complaining that the Calvinist God brings about evil. So for you to make an argument out of that, you're going to need to argue on premise one, on Calvinism, God brings about evil in some way, right?

So here, we're just saying the fact it's that he brings about evil, that's a problem. So our premise is that on Calvinism, God brings about evil in some way. But for the argument to work now in premise two, what you need to do is say, but in fact, God does not bring about evil in any way.

Because in order to deny the first one, right? So God brings about evil in some way. The denial is that God does not bring about evil in any way. Therefore, Calvinism is false. So here we have a logically valid argument, right?

On Calvinism, God brings about evil in some way. But in fact, God does not bring about evil in any way. Therefore, Calvinism is false. And the problem with this one, it's the ambitious recipe. It's too ambitious because premise two now is self-refuting for a Moralist.

That is that you cannot be claiming that God does not bring about evil in any way because there's a very allegedly milder sense than the Calvinist, but it's still a very real sense in which the Moralist God is bringing about evil.

He's just doing it in an indirect way in which they think alleviates him from any responsibility in some detrimental events. Exactly.

So that claim is too strong for the Moralist because their own model requires that God do that, right? So, again, come back to those biblical scriptures. God does that. He brings about evil in some way.

And then the debate is gonna be like, is this the Calvinist way or the Moralist way? But you can't be arguing that God doesn't bring about evil in any way. That's the ambitious recipe and that's self-refuting.

So you can now qualify what you're saying and not complain that he brings about evil in any way, like in some way, but you can qualify it in what way more specifically does the Calvinist God bring about evil, right?

And so this is what now I've called the timid recipe because now it's arguing Calvinism entails that God stands behind evil in such a way that evil is divinely determined, right? That's really the root of the concern here.

That's the disagreement between the Calvinist and the Moralist is that the Calvinist says that our free choices are determined by God. And so that's now a proposition that the Calvinist is uniquely committed to.

And the Moralist is not touched by this on argument here. He says, he's got the Calvinist in the right target. The problem is that now for that to make us a sound argument, you're gonna need in premise two, the claim that in fact, God does not stand behind evil in such a way that evil is divinely determined, right?

That's the denial of the first one. But that claim is simply question begging because that's the very thesis that's debated. Does determinism entail something bad? So the claim is in premise one is correct.

Now that is that we finally have something that's uniquely entailed by Calvinism, but premise two now is question begging because it's just a denial of determinism. It's saying determinism, God does not determine evil, right?

So, but the Calvinist says, no, God determines evil and there's nothing wrong with what he's doing there. We haven't really progressed there. The premise is still question begging. That's still the heart of what we disagree about.

Does God determining what we do, which includes our sin, does that make him inappropriately involved in our sin? That's really the question before us. So the argument now become questions begging. And so this is the pattern that I see in all the attempts at phrasing an argument against Calvinism on the basis that God determines evil.

It's that it's either foggy and we don't really know what is meant. So we can't even tell you which premise to reject. Or it's ambitious because it's identifying, it's not precise enough to target only Calvinism and it ends up refuting Morganism with it.