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.