Anti-Calvinistic Argument #1

Here is my first anti-calvinistic argument. I worked this out a while back, but the great thing about philosophical and/or theological arguments (as opposed to legal arguments) is that they need updating far less frequently.

I welcome critique from anyone.

Argument #1

According to Calvinist theology, God is just. God will also punish the wicked for their wicked deeds. However, punishing anyone not deserving to be punished, or punishing anyone excessively, or deficiently, in terms of what they deserve, would be unjust. From these premises it follows that God will punish only those who deserve to be punished, and he will punish them exactly to the extent that they deserve to be punished; no more or no less.

But God is also gracious, and he has himself endured enough punishment to suffice as a surrogate punishment for anyone that he wants to extend his mercy to. For this reason, God can be merciful to human beings without violating his commitment to justice, because he has already endured the “just” penalty for sin. He thus extends mercy to various individuals, whom he chooses at his pleasure and for his own reasons. Upon others he simply imposes his perfect justice.

Of course, a person deserves punishment for committing morally wrong acts if and only if that person is morally responsible for committing those acts. However, no one who is compelled to commit morally wrong acts by any force outside of his or her own autonomous volitional control is morally responsible for committing such acts. The only two exceptions to this principle are:

1) If the person is responsible for the original existence of the force that compels such acts.

or

2) If the person had some opportunity to, by her own free volition, select a remedy that would nullify the force that compels such acts, but rejected that remedy of her own free volition.

Calvinism teaches that human beings naturally commit morally wrong acts. Given the sinfulness of our natures it is impossible for us not to do so, at least some of the time. Our natures compel us to act as we do, and make it impossible for us to act otherwise. In short, our natures constitute, for us, a negatively compelling force that exceeds our (natural) volitional control. We are not free with respect to sin. The fact that we actually “want” or “desire” to sin when we do sin is irrelevant to this point, because our “wants” are not subject to our control. They are just as much a function of our fallen natures as our actions. We cannot “not want” to sin by any act of our own wills, any more than we can continually keep ourselves from obeying our sinful desires. Thus, the fact that the compelling force for sin is “internal to us” does not make us morally responsible for it, or for what it produces. We, as individuals, will be morally responsible for sin only if we are in some way responsible for it’s original, or for it’s continued, existence.

However, Calvinism teaches that all of us were born with sinful natures. None of us (personally) choose to have sinful natures, or did anything that would warrant our deserving such natures prior to our having them. Moreover, there are no natural resources that would allow us to change our natures, assuming that we might desire to do so. As unique moral agents, then, none of us are responsible for the original existence of the force that compels our immoral activity. It precedes, and corrupts, every choice we ever make. Thus, exception #1 of the non-responsibility premise applies to no one.

The only resource available for breaking the power of our sinful natures is the regenerative work of Christ. But as good Calvinists, we also accept the doctrine that we are not free to autonomously choose to participate in the regenerative work of Christ. Christ picks whom he wants for that privilege, and we have nothing what so ever to do with this. Those whom he does not pick are completely unable to pick him from their own resources. Thus, if responding to Christ is the only course of action that will nullify the force that compels our immoral activity, but doing this is completely outside the range of choices that individuals can make from their own volition, it follows that no one who has not experienced Christ’s regenerative work is morally responsible for the continued existence of the force that compels their sin. No one freely rejected the only remedy that could have changed things, since no one was free to choose it in the first place. This means that exception #2 of the non-responsibility premise applies to no one.

But if exceptions #1 and #2 apply to no one, and everyone’s immoral activity stems from a nature that is beyond their volitional control, it follows that no one is ultimately responsible for their immoral acts. And since we agreed that a person deserves punishment for committing morally wrong acts if and only if that person is morally responsible for committing those acts, we must conclude that no one deserves punishment for committing sinful acts, and that God’s punishment of anyone on this account will be unjust. God is then, on the Calvinistic account, both just and unjust.

And because that would be absurd, Calvinism itself is absurd.

Joe H.