1) Calvinism and Armenianism: Introduction

               There is arguably no debate in the Church more heated than that between the theologies of Calvinism and Armenianism.  It is easy to see why.  The scope of each is extensive, covering everything from the definition of “free will” to the definition of “omniscience”.  Can any conclusion be drawn to reconcile the debate?  I think that there is.  But first, we ought to put on the table just what Calvinism and Armenianism are, and, more importantly, what strengths and weaknesses they have.

2) Calvinism and Armenianism: An Analysis of Calvinism

               Calvinism first.  Most people are familiar with Calvinism – it is, as of today, dominant in the Church – but even so, I’ll summarize it briefly.  The entirety of Calvinist theology can be summarized through the single statement: “God causes all things”.  The Calvinist God has exhaustively settled the future, down to amount of honey you will put in the tea you will drink on January 16^th, 2017 at 8:36 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.  He knows everything that will happen, not simply because he knows everything but because he is the one causing it to happen.  A common term tied to Calvinism is predestination, or foreordination, which simply means that when something (anything) happens, it happens because God said, “This shall happen”.

                There are strengths to this doctrine.  First, it offers a simple an obvious interpretation to the verses in the Bible which assert God’s sovereignty.  It also leaves God’s infallibility intact; if he wants something to happen, he will cause it to happen.  He has that power.  Calvinism attributes truly absolute power to God.  And that is, to Christians, how it ought to be: God ought to be the most powerful being that has ever and will ever exist.

                But there are also weaknesses here – fatal weaknesses, in my opinion.  In fact, the arguments against Calvinism have been thrown in Calvinists’ faces so often that I regret the need to produce those same arguments yet again (I’m sure Calvinists are getting rather weary of it).  But I must.  Calvinism offers no explanation for the problem of evil.  For, if God is to be considered the cause of absolutely all of our actions, then that means that he causes people to do evil things as well, such as murder, lie, or steal.  An act of love by a person is caused by God; so is an act of hatred by another.  This is a startling compromise of the unilateral agreement among theologians that God is perfectly good and that he never causes evil.

                Now, Calvinists have attempted to amend this flaw through the concept of secondary causality.  What this means, in short, is that they have suggested that if God causes someone to cause evil, then it is the second cause – the person – who is responsible for the evil which was caused.  I would like to briefly note, before I go on, that I do not know if Calvinists are still pressing this point.  But just in case they are, I would like to refute it.  There are two reasons why this contention does not work.

                First, its truth-value finds no realization in the real world.  To demonstrate this, I would like to conduct a brief thought experiment.  Imagine a scientist who has invented a microchip which, when surgically inserted into someone’s brain, gives him complete control of that person.  The scientist, once the microchip is implanted, forces the subject to murder a man in cold blood.  Who is responsible for the murder?  Clearly, the scientist is, because the subject was forced: he could not have done any differently than what he did.  The scientist, on the other hand, could just as soon have forced his subject to give to charity or hug his wife rather than murder.  The little insight that we can glean from this thought experiment comes from the realization that the God of Calvinism can be perfectly compared to the scientist, and mankind can be perfectly compared to the scientist’s subject.  If God is the one who causes everything to happen, then we do not have control over anything that we are doing.  God is the one who is ultimately responsible for everything we do, including our immoral actions.

                Second, even if we were to suppose that the secondary cause of an action is itself responsible for perpetuating that action, then we have simultaneously thrown away one of the fundamental tenets of Calvinism.  Allow me to explain.  Calvinists believe in total depravity.  The precise meaning of this belief is extensive and impossible to explain completely and briefly.  For now, we need only to concern ourselves with one part of this doctrine.  Total depravity means that mankind cannot do anything good without God’s help (exactly what “good” means here is flexible, but only slightly).  It also, by extension, means that whenever God helps a man do something righteous, God is ultimately credited for it.  Man, after all, could not have done anything good on his own.  He needed God both as the source and the cause.  It makes perfect sense, then, that God is given credit.  For if God is the first cause and man the second cause of a good deed, then of course that is to God’s credit.  If the scientist forced his subject to give to charity, that would be charitable on the scientist’s part, not the subject’s.

                But we see here a critical inconsistency.  On the one hand, Calvinism says that God is credited for good deeds on account that he is the first cause.  On the other hand, Calvinism says (or used to say) that man is credited for evil deeds on account that he is the second cause.  We must decide, once and for all, which cause gets the credit.  As I pointed out two paragraphs up, it is clearly the first cause which gets the credit.  A puppeteer gets credit for what the puppet does.  The scientist gets credit for what his robot does.  Thus, if God is to be the considered the cause of all of our actions, then he is to be put in the same boat as the puppeteer and the scientist.  We would, allowing Calvinism its way, be forced to conclude that God causes men to do evil things.  Theologically, we simply cannot do this.

                As I understand, Calvinists have further tried to amend this through the contention that God controls everything “in such a way” that man is still responsible for evil.  I would like to return to this later.  For now, we note before moving on that this contention can be neither proven nor refuted.  Calvinists who suggest this will tell you that the “way” referred to in their “in such a way” clause is ultimately inscrutable.  We have dealt with what we have been able to deal with, and, according to workable logic, we have found that setting up God as the first cause of everything makes him responsible for everything, including evil.  Defeated, we count on Armenianism to succeed where Calvinism has failed.

3) Calvinism and Armenianism: An Analysis of Armenianism

               There is perhaps nothing more opposite than Calvinism and Armenianism.  For while Calvinism contends that God has the future exhaustively settled, Armenianism contends that God has not settled the future.  He has left it open to leave room for human free will; we all have the option to do “this or that” precisely because God has not decided nor does he know what will happen in the future.  Now, most Armenianists will tell you that God has a rough framework for where he wants this world to go.  But he does not know precisely how these events will come to pass.  You could say that God and men share in their control of the future; God because of his superior power and wisdom, and men because God has given them the gift of free will and the freedom to exercise it.

                Armenianism is strong where Calvinism is weak.  It presents to us a clear explanation of the origin of evil.  We have free will, since God neither controls us nor decides our future, and we used it for evil deeds.  To explain why God endowed us with the ability to do evil at all, Armenianism can always remind us that without the ability to do evil, we would not have the ability to do good, either.  Love that is forced, for instance, is not really love at all.  The ability to love comes with the ability to hate simply by definition.

                But coincidentally, Armenianism is also weak where Calvinism is strong.  While it leaves ample room for evil and free will, it is unable to attribute to God the amount of power and knowledge which he is due.  Armenianists will protest this to the grave, so I had better give my reasons.

                Whatever we suppose about God, we ought to suppose that he cannot fail, not simply because so many theologians before us have insisted as much, but because we realize that it makes sense after thinking about it for long enough.  If God fails, then according to whose standard has he failed?  His own?  In that case, how could he remain God if he has fallen short of his own standard?  Wouldn’t the standard, then, be what we call “God” instead, since God has fallen short of it?  Thus, we conclude that God cannot fail.  The problem is that, according to the Armenianist account, God can fail.  He has left the future open, and as such, he does not know what will happen in that future.  He has an “outline”, if you will, communicating a general idea of where he wants history to go, but even he cannot guarantee that it will come to pass.

                Armenianists hasten to point out that though God can fail, he won’t fail.  He is often compared to a master chess player so skilled at chess that he can anticipate every move his opponent (in this case, the Devil) might make, and, more importantly, the ideal response to any move his opponent makes.  Note in passing, however, that God still only knows what his opponents might do.  I’m sure I don’t know why, but Armenianists staunchly deny God the surety of what his opponents will do.  And if God does not know for certain what his opponents will do, then how can he guarantee us that he certainly will succeed?  The best he can offer is that he might succeed, for that is all he can anticipate about his opponents’ moves.

                Armenianists are like to slough this point off on account of their belief that God knows what people very probably will do.  In other words, he knows with 99.999…% certainty that person A will freely choose B given circumstances C.  Two things.  First, while this contention does make it look extremely likely that God will succeed, it does not remove the merit of my previous contention.  There is still only a 99.999…% chance of that he will succeed, and a 0.000…1% chance that he will fail.  To be considered theologically coherent, Armenianism, if it cannot tell us that God cannot fail, should at least be able to guarantee us that God won’t fail.  But it cannot even do this. 

Second, this idea actually exposes another flaw with the Armenianist God; namely, a flaw in omniscience.  Now, in order to qualify as omniscient, we ought to say that God must, at minimum, know whatever he knows completely.  It is almost self-evident that he would not know something only to a limited extent; for instance, if he knew about horses, he would not have knowledge only of its muscular system and lack knowledge of its skeletal system.  If he knew about horses, he would know every conceivable thing that there is to know about them; if he didn’t, then clearly knowledge would be missing from him, and he would not be omniscient.  But we see that the God of Armenianism does not fulfill this constraint of omniscience.  For God knows what people will do, but he does not know this completely; he knows it with 99.999…% surety but not quite 100% surety.  Such is the equivalent of God knowing 99.999…% of the facts there are to know about horses.

                The Armenianist will combat this by denying that what someone will do is a truth; they will contend that it cannot be known what someone will do, and thus, God does not need to know it in order to qualify as omniscient.  There are two more problems with this.  First, if what someone will do was not a truth and thus could not be known, then God would not know anything of it.  Speaking methodically: if something cannot be known, then God knows it with 0% certainty.  If something can be known, then God must know it with 100% certainty in order to qualify as omniscient (since omniscience requires that God knows whatever he knows completely).  He would not, if something could be known, know it with 99.999…% certainty.  Armenianists must decide whether or not God knows what someone will do with 0% certainty – in which case they hold that what someone will do is not a truth – or 100% certainty – in which case they hold that what someone will do is a truth.  Until one of the two is decided, the Armenianist God still does not obey the constraints of omniscience.

                Second, it is not even convincing to say that what someone will do is not a truth in the first place.  Namely, because everyday people with flawed knowledge in comparison to God can know it to a certain extent.  We can analyze patterns of behavior and predict, with weak but not invalid accuracy, what someone will do.  Armenianism, to escape the problem of insufficient knowledge in the God of its theology, must suppose that he knows with 0% surety what people will do; which would be very odd indeed in light of the fact that ordinary people can know this with some 25% surety or so (far more for psychologists).  Or they can suppose that God knows what people will do with 100% surety, at which point Armenianism collapses into a completely different theology known as Molinism, or Middle Knowledge, which is not discussed in this essay.   

                I acknowledge that the God of Armenianism has a 99.999…% chance of success.  But the fact that there is still a 0.000…1% chance of failure is simply theologically imprudent.  Where the rubber meets the road, God cannot guarantee that he cannot nor that he will not fail.  God ought not to be considered, “A thoroughly powerful being who is 99.999…% perfect.”  He ought to be, “The only being who is 100% perfect.”

4) Calvinism and Armenianism: Considering a 50/50 Approach

               So we see that both Calvinism and Armenianism possess critical flaws which prevent us from, in good conscience, believing wholly in one or wholly in the other.  Our immediate reaction is to attempt a 50/50 approach, wherein we select half of the beliefs of Calvinism and half of the beliefs of Armenianism and attempt to arrange them into some winsome, coherent theology.  While well meant, this approach is not mindful of exactly what Calvinism and Armenianism are.  The one who attempts this probably sees Calvinism and Armenianism something like two baskets of apples, from which we can assemble our own “basket” by plucking some apples from Calvinism and some apples from Armenianism.  But Calvinism and Armenianism are not like this at all.  They are theologies with their own logical flow.  No one doctrine can be plucked from the rest, because each doctrine logically leads to the next doctrine.

                Allow me to demonstrate what I am talking about using two of the five well-known points of Calvinism.  The two points I will use here are the “T” and “U” in the well-known acronym “TULIP”, which stand for “total depravity” and “unconditional election”.  Total depravity basically means that every aspect of mankind has been corrupted by sin, and that man cannot truly do anything good without God’s help.  Unconditional election means that God alone elects people into the Christian fold; it is by no personal choice or act of will that one is saved.  Notice how these two doctrines are not simply plucked out of the blue.  Total depravity logically leads to unconditional election.  For if man cannot do anything good by any effort of his own, then of course he cannot come to any higher spiritual understanding on his own, either.  If there were some condition that had to be fulfilled in order to become a Christian, then of course totally depraved humans would be incapable of meeting that condition.

                It is crucial to note that these doctrines cannot easily, if at all, be mixed and matched.  You could not believe in total depravity and conditional election, because if humans are totally depraved, then they could not possibly fulfill any condition required for election by their efforts alone.  You could technically believe in partial depravity and unconditional election, but the lack of connection between the two doctrines makes the belief rather odd.  If man is capable of his own good, why would God be so arbitrary as to not reward him for what good he does?  So we see that it ought to be either total depravity and unconditional election or partial depravity and conditional election.

                I have only handled two dichotomies, here.  But the truth is that a thoroughgoing study of the Calvinist and Armenianist doctrine will show that the vast majority of their beliefs are polar like this.  You cannot have both Calvinist doctrine A and Armenianist doctrine B, because the only way you can logically arrive at Armenianist doctrine B is if you believe in Armenianist doctrine A, and even further, Calvinist doctrine A contradicts Armenianist doctrine B.  Calvinism and Armenianism, then, cannot be compared to two baskets of fruit, where a part can be removed from the whole and still be useful as a part.  They are much more comparable to two diverging paths in a wood.  To get to the second brick, you must walk over the first brick, and, of course, you cannot walk in half of this path and half of that path.  We are forced, by logic, to choose one or the other.

5) Calvinism and Armenianism: Intro to Paradoxicalism

               What can we do now?  We cannot hold that either one or the other is true, and we cannot mix and match them.  There is one option which we have yet to consider; one which has, as far as I know, never been proposed by any serious theologian today.  I believe that we ought to propose it and consider its merits.  That idea is this: Calvinism and Armenianism are both true.  I like to call it Paradoxicalism; I do not know what others have called it, or even if others have thought of it.  It is, in essence, the belief that Calvinism and Armenianism are two sides of a paradox, in which case they are both true, though immediate logic condemns this union.  You could say that, rather than being a 50/50 view, it is a 100/100 view.  Calvinism is 100% right and Armenianism is 100% right because the real Truth which the theologies are trying to explain contains every principle from each, as well as many principles of its own.

                This may be a good visual.  Think of Calvinism and Armenianism as two circles on a paper.

               The area inside the Calvinist circle is “Calvinist” and the area outside the circle is “not Calvinist”.  The same goes for Armenianism.

               Now, the two circles never touch, nor do they intersect.  Thus, you cannot indicate a point on the paper which is found in both Calvinism and Armenianism.  The Calvinist holds that the area within their circle represents what is “true” – that is, it accurately describes the nature of God and his providence – and that the area outside their circle represents what is “false”. 

               The Armenianists holds the same for their circle.

               The 50/50 view recommends that we try and find an area where the two circles intersect, and that that area ought to be considered “true” (while, of course, no such instance can be found).  But the Paradoxicalist view holds that the truth about the nature of God and his providence is represented by all of the area on the page.

               Calvinism and Armenianism both contain some of that area – i.e. they both contain some of the truth about the nature of God and his providence – but there is area on the page which neither Calvinism nor Armenianism contain – i.e. there are some parts of the truth about the nature of God and his providence which neither theology can express.  And further, since the truth about the nature of God and his providence is represented by all of the area on the page, Calvinism and Armenianism are both true.  In short, Paradoxialism holds that both Calvinism and Armenianism are true because they are like two different snapshots from the same picture, or two different provinces from the same country, etc.

                I should address, before I go on, a misunderstanding that may occur by those who believe in Paradoxicalism.  It presents the danger of us getting flippant about the truth value of certain theologies; I don’t want anyone to get it into heads that all theologies are equally true.  Return to the circles on a page analogy.  Not all circles will be the same size; that is, some theologies will contain more truth than others.

                We can even consider the possibility that some theologies do not deserve a circle on the page because they contain no truth at all.  The only point I am trying to make in this whole essay is that Calvinism and Armenianism are relatively equal in the amount of space they share on the page.  Obscure theologies from somewhere-or-other probably have much smaller circles; if they have circles at all. 

6) Calvinism and Armenianism: Defenses of Paradoxicalism

               I had better give an adequate defense for so unorthodox a view.  First, I’m sure someone who reads this will accuse me of the “God of the gaps” fallacy; that my conclusion is basically saying, “We can’t explain this.  God can.  Let’s just ignore the issue.”  I see, of course, why this might be someone’s first impression.  To those of you with such an impression, I would like to call attention to the previous five sections of this essay.  We have already seen the fatalities of Calvinism, the fatalities of Armenianism, and the impracticality of a 50/50 view.  There are few alternatives remaining besides Paradoxicalism.  Clearly, though it seems immediately impractical to accept such a view, it is better than accepting a view which we already know to be theologically lacking.  There is quite a difference between selecting a random idea to solve a problem which has not even been thought about and finding a creative alternative to a problem with possible solutions have been legitimately weighed.

                Second, it is notable that God is not so infrequently described via paradox.  Here’s a classic example: consider Jesus.  Was he wholly God or wholly man?  If he was wholly God and no man, then there is no reason to suppose that God the Father could not just as easily have found a less painful way to reconcile mankind to himself which did not involve Jesus being incarnated as a human.  If he was wholly man and no God, then why is it that only Jesus could perform the duty with which he was charged?  If Jesus could do it as an ordinary human, could not any ordinary human be just as capable of living a life just as righteous?  And we cannot easily, if at all, say that Jesus was half God and half man.  If he was, say, omnipotent but flawed in his knowledge and thus not omniscient, then that hardly qualifies him as God or man as opposed to being something quite different from the two.  Mixing and matching traits from God and man results in some sort of demi-god.  Biblical exegesis denies this conception of Jesus.  We are left with the inevitable conclusion that Jesus was fully God and fully man, though such a union seems immediately impossible.  How could flawed human nature be joined to the flawless nature of God?  But that is the best conclusion theologians have come up with: the two natures were joined, not mixed.

                This is but one example of the many paradoxes that have been employed to describe God.  There is also the Trinity, among others.  Which, of course, makes sense.  Surely, we will never be able to fully understand or describe God.  The moment we do – the moment we come up with some perfectly comprehensible theory which can fully describe God ought to be the moment we leave the Christian faith.  A God which we can understand perfectly is not much of a God at all.

                It is cause for concern, then, that Calvinism and Armenianism, in the raw, profess to do just that (I say “in the raw” because some forms of the theologies have annexed certain ambiguous clauses to amend their theological issues.  These will be discussed later).  Each theology describes things that are quite central to God’s nature; namely, how he provides for his creation.  Does he control everything completely, or does he limit his control to leave room for free will?  Calvinism argues for one, and Armenianism for the other.  But if these two sides of God are indeed both true about him in a paradoxical way, then Calvinism and Armenianism, at worst, seem almost legalistic in their attempt to divorce these two essential parts of God’s nature from each other.  At best, it seems overly ambitious to think that we can so concisely describe something so central to God’s character to the extent that Calvinism and Armenianism attempt.  If Paradoxicalism was indeed true, it would be quite in line with the way that we have been describing God all this time, unlike Calvinism and Armenianism alone. 

                I have saved my third and best defense of Paradoxicalism for last.  You may have noticed that no sane Calvinist will go about telling you that you ought not to rationalize and seriously consider the choices which you make.  You may also have noticed that no sane Armenianist goes about worrying that God is not in control, or, when something bad happens, you will not hear them say, “Perhaps this horrible thing has occurred within God’s 0.000…1% chance of failure.”  What I think is interesting about both of these attitudes is that neither theology warrants them.  In other words, a thoroughgoing Calvinist is not permitted by his own theology to think that human rationalizing and decision-making is worth anything.  Nor is a thoroughgoing Armenianist permitted by his theology to have 100% confidence in a God with only a 99.999…% chance of success.

What am I saying?  That every Calvinist should be an aimless drifter and every Armenianist should be a frazzled worry-wart?  No.  I’m saying that Calvinists and Armenianists ought to realize the implications of what they are doing.  Sane Calvinists know that you will not end up very happy if you sit around, never making a decision, expecting God’s predestination to animate you.  Sane Armenianists know that you will not end up very happy unless you count on God 100% percent of the time.  The implications here have been missed.  In order for a Calvinist to make sense of his reality, he must, to a measurable extent, defy his own theology.  So must an Armenianist.  Paradoxicalism calls attention to this fact: it is a doctrine which has been forged on the realization that this thing we call Reality cannot be handled correctly without borrowing “surety” from Calvinism and “the importance of effort” from Armenianism.

I would also like to call attention to the fact that Calvinism and Armenianism have borrowed from each other not only in practice but also in doctrine.  Most Calvinists nowadays, for example, believe in what I like to call the “in such a way” clause.  They believe that God exhaustively controls everything “in such a way” that mankind is still responsible for what he does.  This communicates to us that Calvinists know the theological importance of human responsibility.  The same goes for Armenianists.  However, instead of an “in such a way” clause, Armenianists have a “simply will not” clause.  Against all odds and protests, Armenianists hold that their God “simply will not” fail, even without adequately rebuking objections from the other side.  Armenianists also concede that divine infallibility is theologically important.

We also know, however, that only Calvinism logically leads to divine infallibility, and only Armenianism logically leads to human responsibility.  Calvinism cannot logically lead to human responsibility.  Nor can Armenianism logically lead to divine infallibility.  Conventional logic cannot give us both, but we need both in order to make a consistent theology.  Paradoxicalism makes sense of this logical conundrum by saying that both Calvinism and Armenianism are fully true, and thus, that divine infallibility and human responsibility are both true.  I would say, in fact, that Calvinism with the “in such a way” clause added, and Armenianism with the “simply will not” clause added, are almost a kind of pseudo-Paradoxicalism.  But rather than making their whole theology into a paradox like full-fledged Paradoxicalism, Calvinism and Armenians have simply added the small paradoxes “in such a way” and “simply will not”, respectively, to amend the flaws in their theologies.

Again, I am not saying that Calvinists and Armenianists should omit these paradoxes, and instead that they should accept insufficient theologies.  I am saying that they should recognize these paradoxes for what they are; borrowing what they need from their competitors.  Neither theology makes sense without at least some big ideas from the other.

Thus we can verify the truth-value of Paradoxicalism on account that it renders intelligible three important analyses: 1) God has a history for being describable only by paradox.  2) Calvinism and Armenianism continually borrow theological ideas from each other in order to remain theologically sufficient.  3) Calvinism and Armenianism, in the raw, do not lead to reasonable practice; only some kind of combination of attitudes warranted by each can lead to a fulfilling life.

7) Calvinism and Armenianism: Conclusion

               What then?  Is there any good to studying Calvinism and Armenianism?  Of course.  If we are to say that both are true, then the more we know of them, the more we know of the Truth they point to and describe parts of.  What we ought to stop doing is supposing that one is right and the other is wrong.  There is far too much merit to them both.

                I would not even say that people should stop being Calvinists and Armenianists and start being Paradoxicalists in terms of what they identify as.  Paradoxicalism has shed a new light on what it means to be a Calvinist and what it means to be an Armenianist.  Before, if you were a Calvinist, it usually meant that you thought Calvinism was the right way to think about God, and that all other ways were either dead wrong or not quite as right.  The same went for Armenianism.  But now, since we see that Paradoxicalism is true, it is not quite like that.  To be a Calvinist is now to express a preference – you identify with the side of God that is in control and that can work everything out for a reason.  You interact with God through this lens.  When you pray, you are aligning yourself to his immovable will.  When something bad happens, you know that God will be able to make something good out of it.  The same goes for Armenianism – you identify with the side of God that has given you the freedom and opportunity to reciprocate his love for you.  When you pray, you honestly plead your case to him.  When something bad happens, you know that God genuinely grieves with you.

                It is far different, in light of Paradoxicalism, to say, “I’m a Calvinist,” or, “I’m an Armenianist”.  To say, “I’m a Calvinist” simply means that you admire the Calvinist parts of God’s character, the way that you admire certain traits in your friend more than others.  To say, “I’m an Armenianist” means that you admire the Armenianist parts of God’s character.  But of course, in your admiration for one characteristic, you cannot simply deny the existence of the other characteristics.  They are still there and just as much a part of God as the other characteristics.

                Thus Calvinism and Armenianism are useful for one to find their preference, and get some clarity as to how they relate to God.  Paradoxicalism is useful in keeping the two respectful and knowledgeable of the fact that there are many genuine ways to relate to God, the way that there are many genuine ways to relate to a friend.  It also reminds us of the ultimate depth and inscrutability of God’s character.