Kenny
March 21st 2003, 04:23 PM
This is my first post on the Theology Web. Some of you may recognize me from the Secular Web which is where I usually post. But, I thought this discussion would be far more appropriate over here.
I have come to adopt a Calvinistic understanding of election and salvation. Below I refute the charge that Calvinism is inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to have a genuine causal impact on the prospect of someone’s salvation. I’m thinking about working this argument up into a paper someday, so I am interested in seeing what any potential criticisms of it might be. Right now, I only have the argument in an outline type structure, so I hope it is not too difficult to follow. I'll need to seperate this into two posts because of the length.
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Thesis: A strong Calvinistic doctrine of election is not inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to have a genuine causal impact on whether or not a person will receive salvation. It is also not inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to increase the probability that a person will receive salvation.
Scenario: Jill is a Calvinist who is considering whether or not she should witness to Bob whom she genuinely cares for and hopes will be saved. Jill is aware that Christ commands her, in the great commission, to spread her faith and that such a motivation ought to be sufficient for her to witness, but Jill is also timid and wonders if there is any further motivation she can draw upon to help spur her on to witness to Bob. Specifically, she wonders whether her witness or lack thereof to Bob has any relevance to Bob’s salvation. “After all,” Jill thinks, “if Bob is elect then it is certain that he will be saved and if Bob is not elect then it is certain that Bob will not be saved.” “So,” Jill wonders, “does my witnessing or not witnessing to Bob have any real causal relevance to whether Bob will or will not receive salvation? Does it make Bob’s salvation any more or less likely.” Jill is aware that the standard Calvinist view is that God’s sovereign grace in brining about the salvation of the elect is worked through the means of the preaching the Gospel on the part of human beings, “But,” Jill asks herself, “if I don’t witness to Bob and Bob is elect then God will just use someone else to do it or use some other means. Why should I overcome my shyness and witness to Bob if God will just use someone else if I don’t?”
Sub-Thesis: Counterfactual analysis shows that, while God’s decree of election may make whether or not Bob will receive salvation certain, it can still be consistently maintained that there are meaningful senses in which Jill’s witnessing to Bob or lack thereof is causally relevant to whether or not Bob receives salvation and that, by witnessing to Bob, Jill might significantly increase the probability that Bob receives salvation.
Preliminary Comments:
1.) Causal Relevance and Counterfactuals: Although a full analysis of the concept of causality would prove rather difficult, questions of causal relevance are essentially counterfactual questions. When historians try to trace out causal connections between events, for example, they often find themselves having to speculate about what would have happened if this or that historical event had not taken place or had occurred differently. Thus, if A and B are two events that have occurred and A has temporally preceded B, it can be said that event A is causally relevant to event B if the statement “If it were the case that, all else being equal, A had not occurred, B would not have occurred” is non-trivially true. This is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of causality, but as one that is sufficient for present purposes.
2.) Possible Worlds: What does it mean for the counterfactual statement “If it were the case that, all else being equal, A had not occurred, B would not have occurred” to be non-trivially true. Normal first order predicate logic is insufficient to give an adequate account of such a statement because, in first order predicate logic, the statement “If not A then not B” is trivially true provided that antecedent and the consequent are both known to be false. However, for a causal analysis, it would seem essential to capture the idea of some sort of stronger connection between A and B. This is often accomplished by adding the modal term ‘necessarily’ to the above conditional, where ‘necessarily’, in this context, might be interpreted to mean “true in all logically possible worlds.” The statement “Necessarily, if not A then not B” may be non-trivially true or non-trivially false regardless of what the truth values of the antecedent and consequent actually are. Formally, the statement ‘Necessarily, if not A then not B’ would be written as ‘[](~A -> ~B)’. One more nuance must be added to the above analysis of causal relevance. “If not A then not B,” where A and B refer to contingent events, seems rather unlikely to be true in *all* possible worlds since, in many worlds, causal correlations are likely to be different than in our own. In addition, causal connections may differ from world to world depending on other contingent circumstances besides the particular events being discussed. We may rid ourselves of former difficulty, however, simply by restricting ourselves to worlds with causal correlations relevantly similar to the types of causal correlations that hold in our own world. We may remove ourselves from the later difficulty by restricting the domain of worlds involved to those worlds with relevantly similar contingent circumstances up to the time of event A. In the definitions of terms given in the model soon to follow below, this function is served by the ‘X’ term.
3.) God’s Sovereign Decree and Causal Relevance: On a strong view of God’s decree, God’s sovereign decree makes all possible future outcomes certain. However, it seems clear that such a view does not cancel out the above notion of causal relevance. For instance, suppose Joe gets up in the morning at 5:30a and drinks a cup of coffee at 6:00a on May 18, 2003. On a strong view of God’s sovereign decree, it was certain that Joe would drink a cup of coffee at 6:00a on that date because God had decreed that Joe would do so (since God’s sovereign degree is taken to encompass all contingent events). Nevertheless, it still seems meaningful to say that if Joe had slept in until 6:15a on May 18, 2003, he would not have drank coffee at 6:00a on that day. Thus, the event of Joe’s waking up before 6:00a on May 18, 2003 is causally relevant to the event of Joe’s drinking a cup of coffee at 6:00a on May 18, 2003, even if God’s sovereign decree made the event Joe’s drinking a cup of coffee at 6:00a on that date certain. In other words, there are still possible worlds where Joe does not drink a cup of coffee at 6:00a because he did not get up before 6:00a, even if God’s decree insures that such worlds are not actualized. The relevance of this discussion will play itself out in the analysis below.
4.) Objective and Epistemic Probabilities: Epistemic probabilities concern themselves with how much warrant a proposition (such as “Bob will receive salvation”) has on the background information of which one is aware. Objective probabilities concern themselves with the ratio of possible worlds, given certain restrictions, in which a proposition is true compared to the number of worlds in which it is false. Sometimes these probabilities are closely related to one another and sometimes they radically diverge, depending on the circumstances. The analysis below is primarily concerned with objective probabilities, though it is plausible that in some situations such probabilities might closely parallel epistemic probabilities as well.
Analysis:
Below I present a logically consistent model in which Jill’s decision to witness to Bob or refrain from witnessing to Bob is both causally relevant to Bob’s receiving salvation and in which Jill’s choice to witness to Bob can be meaningfully said to increase the objective probabilities that Bob will receive salvation, even given a strong Calvinistic doctrine of election.
I have come to adopt a Calvinistic understanding of election and salvation. Below I refute the charge that Calvinism is inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to have a genuine causal impact on the prospect of someone’s salvation. I’m thinking about working this argument up into a paper someday, so I am interested in seeing what any potential criticisms of it might be. Right now, I only have the argument in an outline type structure, so I hope it is not too difficult to follow. I'll need to seperate this into two posts because of the length.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thesis: A strong Calvinistic doctrine of election is not inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to have a genuine causal impact on whether or not a person will receive salvation. It is also not inconsistent with a motive for evangelism that seeks to increase the probability that a person will receive salvation.
Scenario: Jill is a Calvinist who is considering whether or not she should witness to Bob whom she genuinely cares for and hopes will be saved. Jill is aware that Christ commands her, in the great commission, to spread her faith and that such a motivation ought to be sufficient for her to witness, but Jill is also timid and wonders if there is any further motivation she can draw upon to help spur her on to witness to Bob. Specifically, she wonders whether her witness or lack thereof to Bob has any relevance to Bob’s salvation. “After all,” Jill thinks, “if Bob is elect then it is certain that he will be saved and if Bob is not elect then it is certain that Bob will not be saved.” “So,” Jill wonders, “does my witnessing or not witnessing to Bob have any real causal relevance to whether Bob will or will not receive salvation? Does it make Bob’s salvation any more or less likely.” Jill is aware that the standard Calvinist view is that God’s sovereign grace in brining about the salvation of the elect is worked through the means of the preaching the Gospel on the part of human beings, “But,” Jill asks herself, “if I don’t witness to Bob and Bob is elect then God will just use someone else to do it or use some other means. Why should I overcome my shyness and witness to Bob if God will just use someone else if I don’t?”
Sub-Thesis: Counterfactual analysis shows that, while God’s decree of election may make whether or not Bob will receive salvation certain, it can still be consistently maintained that there are meaningful senses in which Jill’s witnessing to Bob or lack thereof is causally relevant to whether or not Bob receives salvation and that, by witnessing to Bob, Jill might significantly increase the probability that Bob receives salvation.
Preliminary Comments:
1.) Causal Relevance and Counterfactuals: Although a full analysis of the concept of causality would prove rather difficult, questions of causal relevance are essentially counterfactual questions. When historians try to trace out causal connections between events, for example, they often find themselves having to speculate about what would have happened if this or that historical event had not taken place or had occurred differently. Thus, if A and B are two events that have occurred and A has temporally preceded B, it can be said that event A is causally relevant to event B if the statement “If it were the case that, all else being equal, A had not occurred, B would not have occurred” is non-trivially true. This is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of causality, but as one that is sufficient for present purposes.
2.) Possible Worlds: What does it mean for the counterfactual statement “If it were the case that, all else being equal, A had not occurred, B would not have occurred” to be non-trivially true. Normal first order predicate logic is insufficient to give an adequate account of such a statement because, in first order predicate logic, the statement “If not A then not B” is trivially true provided that antecedent and the consequent are both known to be false. However, for a causal analysis, it would seem essential to capture the idea of some sort of stronger connection between A and B. This is often accomplished by adding the modal term ‘necessarily’ to the above conditional, where ‘necessarily’, in this context, might be interpreted to mean “true in all logically possible worlds.” The statement “Necessarily, if not A then not B” may be non-trivially true or non-trivially false regardless of what the truth values of the antecedent and consequent actually are. Formally, the statement ‘Necessarily, if not A then not B’ would be written as ‘[](~A -> ~B)’. One more nuance must be added to the above analysis of causal relevance. “If not A then not B,” where A and B refer to contingent events, seems rather unlikely to be true in *all* possible worlds since, in many worlds, causal correlations are likely to be different than in our own. In addition, causal connections may differ from world to world depending on other contingent circumstances besides the particular events being discussed. We may rid ourselves of former difficulty, however, simply by restricting ourselves to worlds with causal correlations relevantly similar to the types of causal correlations that hold in our own world. We may remove ourselves from the later difficulty by restricting the domain of worlds involved to those worlds with relevantly similar contingent circumstances up to the time of event A. In the definitions of terms given in the model soon to follow below, this function is served by the ‘X’ term.
3.) God’s Sovereign Decree and Causal Relevance: On a strong view of God’s decree, God’s sovereign decree makes all possible future outcomes certain. However, it seems clear that such a view does not cancel out the above notion of causal relevance. For instance, suppose Joe gets up in the morning at 5:30a and drinks a cup of coffee at 6:00a on May 18, 2003. On a strong view of God’s sovereign decree, it was certain that Joe would drink a cup of coffee at 6:00a on that date because God had decreed that Joe would do so (since God’s sovereign degree is taken to encompass all contingent events). Nevertheless, it still seems meaningful to say that if Joe had slept in until 6:15a on May 18, 2003, he would not have drank coffee at 6:00a on that day. Thus, the event of Joe’s waking up before 6:00a on May 18, 2003 is causally relevant to the event of Joe’s drinking a cup of coffee at 6:00a on May 18, 2003, even if God’s sovereign decree made the event Joe’s drinking a cup of coffee at 6:00a on that date certain. In other words, there are still possible worlds where Joe does not drink a cup of coffee at 6:00a because he did not get up before 6:00a, even if God’s decree insures that such worlds are not actualized. The relevance of this discussion will play itself out in the analysis below.
4.) Objective and Epistemic Probabilities: Epistemic probabilities concern themselves with how much warrant a proposition (such as “Bob will receive salvation”) has on the background information of which one is aware. Objective probabilities concern themselves with the ratio of possible worlds, given certain restrictions, in which a proposition is true compared to the number of worlds in which it is false. Sometimes these probabilities are closely related to one another and sometimes they radically diverge, depending on the circumstances. The analysis below is primarily concerned with objective probabilities, though it is plausible that in some situations such probabilities might closely parallel epistemic probabilities as well.
Analysis:
Below I present a logically consistent model in which Jill’s decision to witness to Bob or refrain from witnessing to Bob is both causally relevant to Bob’s receiving salvation and in which Jill’s choice to witness to Bob can be meaningfully said to increase the objective probabilities that Bob will receive salvation, even given a strong Calvinistic doctrine of election.