by Chris Alexion, Copyright March 18, 2006, all rights reserved. 282 views
If we ask the wrong question, we shouldn't be surprised to get the wrong answer. And that's what too often happens in Arminian objections to a Reformed view of predestination. Atheist arguments from the problem of evil often share a similar effect.
Some folks object to predestination based on its alleged "unfairness." The Calvinistic view of God is supposed to envision a cruel Eastern deity who sends poor, unfortunate non-elect souls to hell and damnation on a mere whim. You almost get the idea that these souls wanted to be saved really, really bad, only to be screwed by the inexorable march of God's decrees. On the other side of the coin, the lucky elect are dragged against their wills, "kicking and screaming," as one radio commentator put it, into heaven.
On the atheistic side, we hear that the existence of evil leaves Christians no room for belief in a God who's both good and omnipotent. Any God worth His salt would quickly clean up said evil, assuming He had the power to do so.
What both these lines of reasoning lack is the proper perspective. To accurately critique an opposing philosophy, it's necessary to adopt the presuppositions of your opponents for the sake of argument, working logically through them to show where they lead to absurdity. But the two objections above want to critique the Reformed worldview without fully engaging the Reformers' view of the sovereignty of God.
In other words, these objections share a Platonic assumption that God is somehow under an external code of ethics that dictates what good Gods ought and oughtn't do. And concomitant with this assumption is the idea that God owes us an account of His dealings. But the secret things belong to God; it's His commands that belong to the children of men. Scripture lets us see that truth is internally consistent. But knowing this doesn't always clue us in to the deep causes of events; God's judgments are unsearchable, and His paths beyond tracing out. There's a legitimate barrier we as creatures simply can't clamber over.
But if we begin with the idea that He doesn't owe us an explanation, then we won't be disappointed. It's beginning with this assumed right-to-always-know-why that makes us feel let down. The same glitch in perspective is what makes the old grade-school baseball joke work: Why do pitchers lift one leg when they throw the ball? Because if they lifted both legs they'd fall down.
The joke plays on the fact that the question is why a pitcher lifts his leg, while the answer explains why only one leg is lifted. Consider the following pairs of questions. (1) "Why did God elect some to judgment?" "Actually, I was wondering why He didn't elect all to judgment." (2) "Why would a just God allow evil?" "If God is just, maybe the correct question is how long He'll allow you to break His law."
Corny though the joke is, it can teach us an important point: Assumptions matter.
1 • Jon • March 25, 2006 • 10:45 AM
Perhaps this is one way to argue for/defend the Reformed position, but it certainly won't convince many. Simply saying that it is also one of the presuppositions that God does not owe us an account of his dealings seems to me to make the problem worse not better. Is the position then that there is nothing that God ought not to do? This seems problematic, and perhaps the best thing to do then is to challenge this presupposition. Certain things like torturing children for pleasure seem necessarily wrong — even God ought not do them. If this is not so, then we have lost all idea of what it means for God to be good. If it just means that God does as he does, then what? When God speaks of his goodness, he seems to be conveying more than this.
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