Predestination and human actions

https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2020/04/predestination-and-human-actions/

Breaking the spell

Because freewill theists often confuse Calvinism with fatalism, I've discussed the difference on a number of occasions. In Classical literature, Creon and Oedipus are paradigm examples. Although it's a bit cheesy, Final Destination 1 (2000) is a convenient illustration. 

But is fatalism real, and is there a way to successfully cheat fate? Cosmic fatalism is incompatible with the sovereignty of God. However, witchcraft has a fatalistic streak. By that I mean, hexing somebody. Suppose you come under a curse. Can you cheat fate?

I don't think that's a hypothetical or isolated case. For instance, witchcraft is common in cultures that practice animism, polytheism, and ancestor worship. 

I'm not talking about folks who merely practice occult rituals, but those who gain actual occult power through the practice of sorcery. 

Within the realm of witchcraft, fatalism may be a real phenomenon. If you've been hexed, you may be doomed.

There is, however, a way to break the spell. Christian missionaries have always engaged in "power evangelism". If a pagan converts to Christianity, then he's not doomed. That's a way to cheat fate. That liberates the convert from occult bondage, although there may be some lingering, residual effects. You've transferred allegiance from a lesser, malevolent power to a greater, benevolent power. 

Fatalism at the cross

There are different ways to define fatalism. Freewill theists use fatalism as a synonym for Calvinism or predestination, but that's confused. In Reformed theology, there's a predestined chain of events leading up to a particular outcome. In fatalism, by contrast, the outcome is the same regardless of the preceding events.

Another definition is where  people unwittingly fulfill an oracle by attempting to avert it. In that sense, the Bible has some fatalistic episodes. One example is the Joseph cycle (Gen 37-50) where his brothers try to thwart the prophetic dream, but their evasive actions ironically facilitate its realization.

A greater example is where Satan engineers the Crucifixion to defeat the Son of God, blind to the fact that Jesus wins in the long-term by "losing" at the cross. In the plan of God, the Crucifixion is a tactical loss. A way to achieve strategic victory. Although Satan may be a criminal genius, his evil blocks his ability to enter into the mind of God. In his effort to defeat Jesus he unwittingly defeats himself. God ironically  used Satan as a means to foil Satan. 

Fatalism, paganism, and predestination

Many people have an instinctive aversion to the idea of predestination. But one of the interesting things about predestination is the way it requires a Christian worldview to underwrite it. In paganism, predestination is impossible. There's no absolute Creator God. The gods are themselves the product of the ongoing world process. The gods are not omniscient. No one god controls everything. They have territorial jurisdictions. 

So it's not possible in paganism for the world to unfold according to a master plan. Many events happen for no reason. Sheer contingency plays a huge role in history. If you reset history at an earlier date, it will never repeat. 

Greek mythology has a murky doctrine of the Fates. They predetermine the human lifespan. 

Classical fatalism is different from predestination because the outcome is inevitable regardless of what else happens. There is no one chain of events leading to a particular outcome, but multiple paths all converge on the same outcome. Changing the initial conditions doesn't change the outcome. It's not clear that fatalism is even coherent in a pagan worldview, except in the deus ex machina sense.  

Prima Donna

A friend drew my attention to the DL today. White spent a few minutes near the start attempting to refute my "hit piece": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO5MbkGC-Ro

He's reacting to this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/03/is-status-quo-frozen-in-place.html

On the DL, he suggested that I didn't have anything else to post on that day, so I went for the low low road. Unfortunately, his counting leaves something to be desired since there were no fewer than 7 posts that day. 

This is a problem with White. He makes snide off-the-cuff comments that come back to bite him. 

Let's comment on something he said earlier on Facebook, which he copy/pasted onto my post:

I really have no idea why Steve has to run over to spit at me about every six months or so, but I guess I was due my spittle today. Absurd out-of-context argument. Maybe Steve doesn't understand Twitter? This was the beginning of what is called a thread. There was more---much more. And, of course, I have sort of said a great deal about this topic over the past year, inclusive of hours of material on the Dividing Line, editing the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, and speaking at the G3 PreConference on the topic as well. So, isolating a single tweet, ignoring the rest of the thread it was a part of, and the entire context of what I've said---well, good job, Steve. Really helps polish up the ol' credibility as they say! For those who do not have a regularly scheduled "spit at James White" thing going on, nothing in what I said for a moment is an argument against pursuing righteousness in God's creation. It does, however, argue against a worldview that does not begin with the divine decree---i.e., intersectionality, that random, chaotic thought process that sees us all as victims of impersonal forces that shape us RATHER THAN image bearers who are called to faithfulness no matter what God's providence sends our way. If Steve can't see that, I feel sorry for him. But I think he can. Only problem is, when you keep spitting in the wind, it ends up in your eyes.

1. Notice how emotional White gets over intellectual criticism: "Steve has to run over to spit at me about every six months or so, but I guess I was due my spittle today…For those who do not have a regularly scheduled 'spit at James White' thing going on…Only problem is, when you keep spitting in the wind, it ends up in your eyes."

For the life of me I'll never understand why some grown men act like Prima Donnas. White is reacting like John Loftus, Richard Carrier, and Dave Armstrong. If you're that thin-skinned, you shouldn't be a Christian apologist. Intellectual criticism comes with the territory. And if you're that self-important, you need to take a break and reset your priorities. The more seriously we take ourselves, the less seriously we take the Gospel. 

2. It's hypocritical to use Twitter, then whine about people judging what they say on Twitter. And yes, I read the entire Twitter thread before I wrote the post. And no, the rest of the thread didn't "completely change" what I said in the post. 

3. I'm very selective about viewing podcasts generally. I dislike the medium. And White's DL marathons are really bad. He rambles incessantly, veers off into chronic digressions, like a random association test. He's ad libbing the whole time. It's a very lazy, inefficient form of analysis. He should rediscover the art of writing. How to express himself in compact, organized fashion. 

Moreover, his complaint is an exercise in misdirection because I wasn't evaluating his overall position on social justice and intersectionality. So that's neither here nor there. 

4. Let's go back to what he originally said:

Let me put this simply.

Intersectionality is utterly incompatible with a belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree.

It is God who makes men to differ, God who makes the lame and the blind and the rich and the poor.

i) To "put it simply" is to summarize his position. That's his position in a nutshell. Needless to say, if you think your position can be succinctly stated in two sentences, then that moots the claim that no one can understand your position unless they listen to hours of your exposition. Conversely, if you think a two-sentence summary is too simple, too liable to misunderstanding, then don't put it simply. What you're not entitled to do is to put it simply, then complain that readers oversimplify your position. Isn't that obvious? 

ii) And notice how the two sentence are juxtaposed, so that the second sentence illustrates the principle enunciated in the first sentence. The problem is that his formulation is classically fatalistic. He makes it sound like you can't do anything, and shouldn't try, to change the status quo since God decreed the status quo. If God decreed who is rich and poor, then who are we to try and help the poor out of poverty?

But if that's not what he intended to convey, if belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree is compatible with improving the status quo for the lame, the blind, and the poor (to take his examples), then where does that leave his original antithesis? 

Put another way, if that's not what he intended to convey, then he should be able to reword what he said to avoid the fatalistic formulation. Just rewrite it. Present an alternative formulation that avoids the fatalistic dichotomy which his original statement erected. 

Is the status quo frozen in place?

Let me put this simply.

Intersectionality is utterly incompatible with a belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree.

It is God who makes men to differ, God who makes the lame and the blind and the rich and the poor.

— James White (@DrOakley1689) March 6, 2019

There are some really good arguments against intersectionality. This isn't one of them. As stated, that's classic que sera sera fatalism. Don't try to change anything because everything is foreordained. Attempting to change the status quo is spiritually mutinous. 

Yes, God makes men to differ. God determines who will be blind and lame, rich and poor. But God predestines changes to the status quo. Presently, Roe v. Wade is the status quo. That doesn't mean the prolife movement is utterly incompatible with a belief in the sovereign kingship of God and His divine decree. Predestination doesn't mean the status quo is frozen in place. God predestines change. In some cases, God predestines social reform. Calvinism isn't Hinduism, with an ironclad caste-system. 

We just do what we can, and what we can do mirrors predestination. If we succeed, that was predestined, and if we fail, that was predestined. We don't know in advance what was predestined. We just go about doing whatever we were going to do. Although predestination is prospective, we discover what was predestined in retrospect.

It's very strange to see White peddle a harmful caricature of Calvinism. Surely he knows better. He should simply critique intersectionality on the merits rather than resorting to defective theological formulations. This illustrates the danger of using Twitter to debate complex issues, which encourages intellectual shortcuts. Here's a good example of a superior lineup:

https://www.gospelsocialjustice.com/

https://www.gospelsocialjustice.com/speaker-bios

Gunslinger rematch

I'm going to comment on some statements in this article: Kenneth D. Keathley, "Molinist Gunslingers Redux: A Friendly Response to Greg Welty," Perichoresis 16/2 (2018), 31–44. 

One weakness in his article is a failure to distinguish between popularizers (Gerstner, Sproul Jr.) and high-level thinkers. In addition, he misclassifies Bruce Ware as a Calvinist, but Ware's position is quite eclectic. He's an Amyraldian Molinist who rejects classical theism. 

Initially, in response to the historical challenge of fatalism as espoused by the Greek Stoics and later by Islam, the primary concern of Molinism was to establish the contingency of future conditionals in the light of God’s exhaustive foreknowledge (Craig 1988).

i) I don't know what that means. Is Keathley alleging that Molinism was developed in response to Greek Stoicism? Was that a major rival in the 16-17C?

ii) Likewise, Islam had been around for nearly a millennium by the time of de Molina. Is Molinism a belated response to Islam? Wasn't Molinism an alternative to Thomism? 

iii) Mutazilite Islam is the Muslim version of freewill theism.

iv) Is Asharite Islam "fatalistic"? Asharite Islam subscribes to occasionalism. 

How is Keathley defining "fatalism"? On a classic definition of fatalism, an agent can be the ultimate source of his own actions as well as having multiple courses of action open to him. The catch is that every route and alternate route have the same detonation. 

As many Calvinists followed Edwards in embracing determinism (particularly in America)...

Throughout his article, Keathley seems to adopt the view of Muller and Crisp that Calvinism was originally indeterministic, and only took a deterministic turn under the influence of Edwards. But what's distinctive to Edwards has more to do with occasionalism and idealism, not determinism. That traditional Calvinism is antithetical to libertarian freedom had been defended by James Anderson and Paul Manata:

http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15697312-01103016

My short answer to his second claim is that I do not think Welty has made his case. And it seems that his argument, if successful, would succeed too well. All theological systems that uphold the traditional view of God’s omniscience would be open to this charge (Welty may contend that that’s exactly his point). 

Indeed, that's his point. Welty is presenting a tu quoque argument, viz.:

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/11/the-problem-of-evil-and-the-argument-from-evil.html

But what does this say about the efforts of apophatic Calvinists to distance themselves from the implications of causal determinism? Most Calvinists distinguish between primary and secondary causation, and embrace infralapsarianism over supralapsarianism. This is why Welty takes an apophatic approach while leaving determinists to fend for themselves. (‘If they are subject to critique, so be it.’) Many of our Reformed brethren recognize the moral difficulties posed by an adherence to causal determinism.

1. Keathley seems to be uninformed about Welty's own position. For instance, he seems to be unaware of the detailed response that Welty and Cohen offered to Walls:

http://www.gregwelty.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/pc-17-1-Cowan-Welty-Pharaoh.pdf

http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=269&mode=detail

http://www.gregwelty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/pc-17-2-Welty-Cowan.pdf

2. Because the Calvinist/Molinist debate can spin off in so many different directions, Welty is bracketing certain issues.

3. A weakness running through his article is Keathley's failure to define his terms:

i) What does he mean by X causes Y?

ii) What does he mean by X determines Y?

iii) Is "causal determinism" something over and above causation or determinism? What does causation add to determinism? What does determinism add to causation?

iv) Take David Lewis's definition: "We think of a cause as something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes must be a difference from what would have happened without it."

On that definition, the Molinist God causes sin and evil by actualizing a possible world containing sin and evil. 

I do not believe one can hold that God accomplishes his will via causal determinism and then appeal to mystery. Where, exactly, is mystery to be located? There seem to be three options. One place possibly could be the question as to why God created this particular world knowing that evil would occur. To my knowledge, both Molinists and Calvinists confess this type of mystery. There’s no dispute here. A second possible location could be the mystery of how God accomplishes his will through other causal agents. Molinists contend that God, with precision and success, perfectly accomplishes his will through genuinely free creatures primarily by means of his omniscience. 

In addition, the Molinist God accomplishes his will by instantiating a particular timeline.  

If, concerning God’s concurrent actions with other agents, apophatic Calvinists wish to appeal to mystery on this point, then this would not seem necessarily to be an item of conflict between Molinists and Calvinists. Molinists provide a possible model while apophatic Calvinists do not, but both affirm that God can and does perfectly accomplish his will. Again, this creates no problem between apophatic Calvinists and Molinists.

It’s one thing to say that it is a mystery how God concurrently accomplishes his will through other agents. It’s another thing to say that it’s a mystery as to why he is not accountable when he causally determines their sins. If this is what is meant when Calvinists appeal to mystery, then indeed Molinists and Calvinists are at odds at this point.

While that's an important issue in its own right, it's irrelevant to the topic of Welty's essay, which was a tu quoque argument. 

But we are created in the divine image, so we reflect God’s ability to make moral choices. 

Many freewill theists have a bad habit of using the divine image as a cipher. They attribute certain things to the divine image. They don't bother to exegete the concept of the divine image from Scripture, but begin with their concept of God (a la freewill theism), then read that back into the divine image. 

We all agree that the man who hires a hit man is also guilty of the hit man’s crime.

And that's in part because the hit man is instrumental to the Don's malicious intentions. On the other hand, using one person to kill another person isn't inherently blameworthy. Generals give orders to foot soldiers in a just-war situation. 

God indeed works through the evil done by wicked agents (Genesis 50; Isaiah 10; Acts 2). All Christians affirm this. But it really does matter whether or not those agents were the origins of their respective choices, and that at significant points they possessed the genuine ability to make those choices.

From the viewpoint of a freewill theist. But that's the very issue in dispute. Keathley fails to argue for his key assumptions. He takes them for granted. And he fails to counter arguments to the contrary. So his objection begs the question. 

In moral arguments, intentions matter. Even a strongly Reformed voice such as Paul Helm emphasizes this: ‘In the case of evil, whatever the difficulties may be of accounting for the fact, God ordains evil but he does not intend evil as evil, as the human agent intends it... There are other ends or purposes which God has in view’ (Helm 1994: 190). God’s intentions and purposes are different from the evil intentions and purposes of the wicked through whom he works or of those he permits to do evil. Molinism understands these evil persons to be the causal agents of their deeds. Thus, Molinism is not ‘sufficiently analogous’ to those versions of Calvinism that affirm causal determinism. 

But their acting in a particular way is determined by the Molinist God instantiating the possible timeline in which they act one way rather than another. God is a necessary cause of that outcome. 

God can permit or allow an evil for just reasons. Consider the following analogy. During World War II, the Allies broke the secret codes of the Germans. According to some historians, the British knew beforehand of German plans to carpet bomb the city of Coventry. It was determined that if special actions were taken to defend the city, then that would tip off the Nazis that the Allies were intercepting their messages. Churchill reportedly made the difficult decision to allow the bombing to occur. Most would agree that Churchill’s responsibility is not ‘sufficiently analogous’ to that of the Axis forces. Similarly, God permits evil but is not culpable for it. God can accomplish righteous purposes through agents that have evil intentions.

Again, consider the following analogy. Imagine the execution of a heinous criminal. Imagine also that the executioner carrying out the death sentence secretly delights in killing other humans, and he enjoys legally performing an act that otherwise would be considered murder. The executioner’s evil intent does not impugn the state’s just cause. The intent of both is not ‘sufficiently analogous’. Similarly, God uses evil people, but he is not culpable for their evil deeds.

And a Calvinist can help himself to Keathley's examples.

Those of us opposed to causal determinism are not simply shadow boxing. The challenges posed by determinism to morality become very clear in the writings of Darwinists. For example, in his The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, Robert Wright (a former Southern Baptist) argues for genetic causal determinism. He does not hesitate to describe humans as ‘puppets’ and ‘robots’. He disposes of notions such as free will and moral responsibility. Evil does not exist. He laments that humans are ‘robots’ held ‘responsible for their malfunctions’ (Wright 1994: 355). The primary advocates of determinism are not Calvinists, but atheists and Muslims.

i) That's an inept comparison because if fails to consider what lies behind the determinate outcome. Are these rational determinants? 

ii) Moreover, in the AI literature, there's the issue of whether robots are moral agents. Mere automata aren't moral agents, but what about artificially intelligent robots? What about robots that pass the Turing test? 

I rejoice that mysterian Calvinists such as Welty also reject causal determinism. 

i) He's misinterpreting Welty. Welty's strategy in his essay is to zero in on a particular issue.

ii) As Welty points out in his recent book on the problem of evil, there's no philosophical consensus on the concept of causation. 

It may have been helpful if Welty had spelled out clearly what models of human agency he believes to be compatible with apophatic Calvinism. Does he believe that libertarian freedom is a live option for the apophatic Calvinist? He doesn’t say. The mysterian Calvinist seems to be noncommittal on whether or not God causes sin. If God causally determines sins, then the Calvinist position is indeed more problematic than the Molinist position, regardless of a claim to mystery. 

i) Yes, there's a sense in which the Calvinist God causes sin. That's not unique to Calvinism. The same holds true for Thomism, Molinism, open theism, Lutheranism, and simple-foreknowledge Arminiansim. 

ii) Yes, there's a sense in which the Calvinist God determines sin. The same holds true for Thomism, Molinism, open theism, Lutheranism, and simple-foreknowledge Arminianism.

For instance, in a cause/effect world, if a suicide bomber pulls the pin on a hand grenade, it's too late to change his mind. At that point, detonation is inevitable. He crossed a line of no return. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that the outcome was indeterminate up to that tipping-point, once he pulls the cap, the outcome is now determinate. Likewise, if the Molinist God instantiates a particular timeline in full knowledge of the outcome, then his creative fiat locks in that particular course of events. 

And it seems that if one denies that God causally determines sinful actions, then one needs Molinism to get the robust sense of God’s sovereign control of all things. For the Christian, the options are divine determinism (either of an occasionalist variety or of an Edwardsian strongest desire variety) or (some form of) libertarianism. What other option is there?

Circumstances also limit one's field of action. If one exit is locked while the other exit is unlocked, I can only use the exit with the unlocked door. That's different from either occasionalism or strongest desire psychology. I don't offer that as an all-purpose alternative, but simply to illustrate Keathley's blinkered imagination. 

For the reasons given above, Molinists believe that preserving libertarian freedom makes a significant difference in distinguishing between the just and pure decisions by God either to permit or work through the wicked and impure actions of humans. 

If that was Keathley's aim, then he needed to write a different article. As it stands, he's claiming the benefits of his preferred conclusions without providing the supporting arguments. There are no intellectual shortcuts in this debate. It's philosophically demanding trench warfare. 

According to determinism, humans are not agents but rather are mere instruments. 

That's his opinion, but he hasn't laid the groundwork for that conclusion. 

Ironic providence

Finally Pharaoh now decides to take action more directly. The Hebrew midwives had not killed Israelite babies at birth, so Pharaoh ordered his own people to kill newborn Israelite males (1:22). (Aaron was three years older than Moses, and would not be among the children affected by the king’s decree; see 7:7.)

Ironically and unknown to Pharaoh, however, his own daughter would undermine his decree out of compassion for a Hebrew baby (2:6-10)—Israel’s future deliverer. God does not always prevent tragedy—but he does ensure his plan for the future of his people and for ultimate justice.

http://www.craigkeener.com/where-was-god-when-tragedy-happened-exodus-122/

A good example of how divine providence is hard to interpret in the short-term. A human observer couldn't anticipate how Pharaoh's murderous decree will lead to his own daughter unwittingly torpedoing the cult of Pharaoh. A human observer couldn't anticipate how her adoption of Moses will raise up a prophet to humiliate the cult of Pharaoh. One event unexpectedly leads to another. 

It's actually a bit "fatalistic" in the classic sense that an action intended to forestall an undesirable consequence is the unintended means by which the undesirable consequence is eventually realized. We seen the same ironic quality of divine providence in the Joseph Cycle (Gen 37-50).  

1. God moves in a mysterious way
   His wonders to perform;
   He plants His footsteps in the sea
   And rides upon the storm.
2. Deep in unfathomable mines
   Of never failing skill
   He treasures up His bright designs
   And works His sov’reign will.
3. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
   The clouds ye so much dread
   Are big with mercy and shall break
   In blessings on your head.
4. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
   But trust Him for His grace;
   Behind a frowning providence
   He hides a smiling face.
5. His purposes will ripen fast,
   Unfolding every hour;
   The bud may have a bitter taste,
   But sweet will be the flow’r.
6. Blind unbelief is sure to err
   And scan His work in vain;
   God is His own interpreter,
   And He will make it plain.

Is Calvinism synonymous with fatalism?

I've posted most of the definitions at one time or another, but it's useful to collate them in one place. 

Is Calvinism fatalistic? Is determinism synonymous with fatalism?

Critics of Calvinism use "fatalism" as an inaccurate term of abuse, because it has invidious connotations that a neutral term does not. Here are some standard definitions and explanations of fatalism. Calvinism is not fatalistic:

Fatalism, in its most usual sense, should not be confused with predestination. Fatalism asserts an abstract necessity without regard to causal antecedents and thus is diametrically opposed to predestination, in which causes and effects, ends and means, are determined in relation to one another. The use of means is rendered futile by fatalism, but not by predestination. The Encyclopedia of Christianity, 4:180.

Another misconception of the determinist position is that, according to determinism, "our choices don't make any difference." This suggests an image of a determinist as one who drives widely on dangerous mountain roads, because "whatever will be will be". Now it may be that there are a few determinists who think and behave like this, but this approach to life is certainly not implied by determinism. A determinist, to be sure, believes in a sense that whatever happens is inevitable. But it does not follow from this, that whatever happens is inevitable, regardless of what I do. For this to be true my own choices and actions would have to be entirely disconnected from the rest of what goes on, so that they make no difference to anything else that happens. But this, far from being implied by determinism, is actually inconsistent with it. So a determinist, if he understands his own position, will be as concerned as anyone to avoid known dangers and to work hard for desired outcomes… W. Hasker, Metaphysics (IVP 1983), 37-38. 

According to this view, then, determinism is the thesis that everything that occurs, including our deliberations and decisions, are causally necessitated by antecedent conditions. Fatalism, by contrast, is the doctrine that our deliberations and decisions are causally ineffective and make no difference to the course of events. In circumstances of fatalism what happens does not depend on how the agent deliberates. The relevant outcome will occur no matter what the agent decides.

Clearly, however, determinism does not imply fatalism. While there are some circumstances in which deliberation is futile (i.e. 'local fatalism'), deliberation is nevertheless generally effective in a deterministic world. Paul Russell, "Compatibilist Fatalism: Finitude, Pessimism and the Limits of Free Will," Ton van den Beld, ed., Moral Responsibility and Ontology (Kluwer: Dordrecht, 2000), 199-218.

This is one of the most common confusions in free will debates. Fatalism is the view that whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, no matter what we do. Determinism alone does not imply such a consequence. What we decide and what we do would make a difference in how things turn out–often an enormous difference–even if determinism should be true. Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Oxford 2005), 19.

An event is naturalistically fated just in case it occurs in every physically possible world. If there are such fated events, then in one clear sense somethings are going to happen no matter what–vary the initial conditions as much as you like (within the bounds of physical possibility) and the fated event will nonetheless eventuate. Naturalistic fatalism in this sense neither entails nor is entailed by determinism. John Earman, A Primer on Determinism (D. Reidel, 1986), 18.

Others hold to fatalism, the ancient (but still popular) idea that future events happen regardless of what we do. Fiction is full of eerie, fatalistic tales, usually about people who try hard to prevent a dire prophecy about them from coming true–but end up right where the prophecy says they will. Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother–which he did, even though he went to great lengths to try to prevent such a tragedy.

Are you fated to read this entire book? If so, then you will read it no matter what you do to avoid reading it, such as throwing the book in the trash. It is the view that all future events will happen no matter what anyone does. The future is fixed and will be a certain way regardless of our deliberations and actions. In modern times, fatalism seems to be an enormously popular idea. Soldiers have been known to say something like “If there’s a bullet with my name on it, I’ll get it. If there’s no bullet with my name on it, I won’t get it. Either way, I can’t change it, so worrying is a waste of time.” Some people express fatalistic sentiments with the old cliché, “Que sera, sera–whatever will be will be.”

Fatalism, however, is not the same thing as causal determinism. Causal determinism says that future events happen as a result of preceding events. That preceding events include things that we do, so many future events happen because of what we do. Fatalism says tht future events happen regardless of what we do. Causal determinists reject fatalism because they believe that people’s actions play a role in events that are determined. Lewis Vaughn & Austin Dacey, The Case for Humanism: An Introduction (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 68, 78-79. [Foreword by Evan Fales.]

It is sometimes supposed that the doctrine of Determinism–in the form of a belief in the causal interconnectedness of all events, from past to present and thence to the future–also has fatalistic implications. But this has got to be wrong. A determinist can well believe that just as our present actions are the effects of past events, so our present actions have their own effects and so can play a role in determining future events. That is to say, a causal determinist can consistently say that our wills are causally efficacious, at least some of the time. Since fatalism denies that our choices can have any effect on what the future is to be, a fatalist cannot consistently say this. Hence determinism does not imply fatalism.

http://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/philosophy/docs/bradley/fatalism.pdf

Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. What do we mean when we say that? Certainly it must have been true that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. But at least on one understanding, the claim seems to involve more than that: it involves the thought that nothing that Oedipus could have done would have stopped him from killing his father and marrying his mother. Somehow, no matter what he chose to do, no matter what actions he performed, circumstances would conspire to guarantee those outcomes. Fatalism, understood this way, thus amounts to powerlessness to avoid a given outcome.

We can put the point in terms of a counterfactual: There are some outcomes such that whatever action Oedipus were to perform, they would come about.

This is a very specific fatalism: two specific outcomes are fated. There is no implication that Oedipus could not effectively choose to do other things: he was free to choose where he went, what he said, what immediate bodily actions he performed.

http://web.mit.edu/holton/www/pubs/determinism&fatalism.pdf

Fatalism is the thesis that all events (or in some versions, at least some events) are destined to occur no matter what we do. The source of the guarantee that those events will happen is located in the will of the gods, or their divine foreknowledge, or some intrinsic teleological aspect of the universe, rather than in the unfolding of events under the sway of natural laws or cause-effect relations. Fatalism is therefore clearly separable from determinism…

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#Int

Last Holiday

Some movies deal with fatalistic themes. One example is Final Destination (2000). Another example is On the Beach (1959). Aussies, as well as an American submarine crew, have survived the thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the USA. However, the survivors know that radioactive fallout will overtake them. They are doomed. 

A third example is Titanic (1997). After the ship strikes the iceberg, the designer questions the crew on how many bulkheads were punctured. Below a certain number and the ship will stay afloat. But above a certain number and the ship will continue to take on water until it sinks. And, of course, that fateful threshold was crossed.

Now that, in itself, wouldn't be cause for panic, but the ship only has enough lifeboats for about half the passengers. The rest will freeze to death in the icy waters. 

What's interesting about fatalistic themes is how they probe what people do who lose hope in the future. That's an acid test of values and character. 

And although these are fictional examples, they have real-world counterparts. Take someone who's diagnosed with a terminal illness. How will he (or she) cope? What will he do with the remaining time?

Alec Guinness made a fine film on that topic: Last Holiday (1950).

An enforced winnowing process to decide what's important in life. Indeed, people shouldn't wait to be diagnosed with a terminal illness to ask themselves how they'd reprioritize their lives if they were given 6 months to live. That's something people should normally ask themselves. Otherwise, they fritter away their lives in frivolous, ephemeral activities. 

Should you lock your door at night?

One of the dumber reactions I've seen to the presidential election is the claim that it doesn't really matter who wins or loses because whatever the outcome, God is in control. People who care about elections are faithless. We have nothing to fear. God has already decreed the winner.

I take it that people who say this fancy themselves to be Calvinists. But they play right into the Arminian caricature of Calvinism as a synonym for fatalism. 

Do the same people who say this lock their door at night? Or would that be distrustful of God's providence? I mean, if God has predestined the house-burglar to break into your home, countermeasures are futile, right? 

In a sense that's true. Yet God hasn't simply decreed what will happen. God hasn't simply decreed who will be president, but who will vote for which candidate and other forms of political activism. The outcome is not irrespective of our efforts, but due to our efforts. Predestination doesn't invite complacency, as if the future will turn out the same way no matter what we do or fail to do. 

By the same token, God hasn't necessarily decreed that the house-burglar will break into your home even if you lock the door. Perhaps he has, but you don't know that in advance. Moreover, it's not as if locking your door thwarted God's decree. It's not as though God decreed that you not lock your door, but you overrode his decree and did it anyway. No, if you lock your doors, then that's why he decreed all along. And that may successfully deter the house-burglar. You only know by trying. 

Fact is, apart from revelation, we don't know ahead of time what God has decreed. That's something we discover in retrospect, as the future becomes the past. Even people who don't believe in predestination fulfill it. So you don't have to give any thought to predestination. You just do whatever you were going to do. God predestines your motives as well as your choices. You act on whatever reasons you had at the time, which turn out to be the reasons God gave you to act on. Not to mention that a certain amount of decision-making is the result of subliminal considerations. You weren't even conscious of all the factors that fed into your choice. 

Some people tie themselves in knots over predestination, but as a practical matter, there's no reason to second guess your actions. It's like saying, if the door is locked, I can't open it. True. But is that a reason not to try the doorknob? No. For if the door isn't locked, then you can open it. And you find out what's possible by giving it a try. Either the door knob will turn or it won't. That doesn't prevent you from finding out which is which. Just go ahead and do what you had in mind. And that's what God predestined! 

Newtonian fatalism

I'd like to employ another example to illustrate a theodicy I often use. I don't think there's one silver bullet theodicy. But by combining several, we cover most-every situation. 

Before getting to that, I often talk about the problem of evil in fairly clinical terms. That's because I'm discussing the intellectual problem of evil rather than the emotional problem of evil. There's really not much you can say about the emotional problem of evil. That's not generally something that can be handled at a distance. It requires face-to-face contact. Grieving with those who grieve (Rom 12:15).

It's like a doctor who has to break terrible news to a patient. Tell the patient that he has terminal cancer or a degenerative illness. Suppose the patient asks why that happened to him? Well, in some cases, the doctor has an answer. He can say that due to your family history, you have a genetic predisposition to develop gastric cancer or Huntington's disease (or whatever). That's the right answer to the question. But, of course, it doesn't make the diagnosis less any less bleak. 

Mind you, even that can sometimes be helpful. The patient knows there's nothing he could have done to prevent it. Early diagnosis wouldn't help. Change of diet wouldn't help. 

In the nature of the case, an answer to the intellectual problem of evil will be somewhat dry. That's because we're addressing the philosophical aspect of the problem. I myself have seen the problem of evil up close and personal. Although I often write about it with critical detachment, that doesn't mean I'm a brain-in-a-vat. It just means I don't discuss family tragedies in public. 

Now for the illustration. To my knowledge, there are two tropes about fatalism in the horror genre:

I. Delayed fatalism

According to this trope, you can never cheat fate. At best, you can postpone the inevitable. But sooner or later, fate will find you. It will sneak back around and get you when you least expect it. You may temporarily outwit your fate, but eventually it will catch you off-guard.

II. Newtonian fatalism

According to this trope, you can cheat fate…but there's a catch! You can cheat fate, but someone else will have to take your place. Fate demands a substitute. In this version, if someone could elude fate, and there's nothing to compensate his evasion, that throws the natural order out of whack. In order to maintain cosmic equilibrium, it's life for life and death for death. You can only escape your fate if that's offset by a fall guy.

This has great dramatic potential in cheesy horror films where you volunteer your best friend. For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly finds himself in near-miss freak accidents. One close call after another. Little does he know you gave him up to save your own skin. And when he finds out…

Although this is fiction, it has a real-world counterpart. In a world that's overwhelmingly governed by cause and effect, every action has a reaction. So Newton's third law has implications for the problem of evil.  

If you think about it, it's a sobering fact that saving one life may come at the expense of another life. Someone may die in an accident because of something someone else did a 100 years earlier. A perfectly innocent action in the past may result in future calamity. Thankfully, most of us don't know the future. Even we did, it would be petrifying to see some of the long-term consequences of our benign actions. 

Likewise, if your father had married a different woman, or your mother had married a different man, you wouldn't be here. Someone else would be here instead. And so on and so forth.

So when we ask, why didn't God do this instead of that, we need to consider how one thing leads to another. It isn't cost-free. Someone's ill-fortune may pay the price for your good fortune, or vice versa. 

Flying blind

1. I've commented on this before, but I'd like to attack it from a new angle. A common plank in the freewill defense is appeal to natural law. In order to make morally responsible decisions, our choices must have predictable consequences. That requires the uniformity of nature. Hence, God can't intervene too often without having disruptive effects. 

2. I think there's a grain of truth to this theodicy. And it's hardly exclusive to freewill theism. Popular caricatures notwithstanding, Calvinism isn't fatalism. In Calvinism, it's not merely the outcome, but every step leading up to the outcome that's predestined. Hence, breakfast won't cook itself whether or not you get out of bed. 

3. An elementary problem with the freewill theist appeal is that life is often unpredictable. Much of the time we're flying blind. We can't reliably anticipate the end-results of our actions. It's just a guessing game. And even when the consequences are foreseeable, there's a big difference between having a purely intellectual grasp of the consequences, and having to actually experience the consequences.

Many people, including many Christians, if they only had the benefit of hindsight, would avoid making some of the decisions they did. And that isn't merely regret over impulsive decisions. You can make a thoughtful, conscientious decision, with the best available information at the time, only to have that blow up in your face. You can make a reasonable, responsible decision, then helplessly watch it turn out for the worst. 

4. According to freewill theism, moreover, a large part of what makes the future so unpredictable is the libertarian freedom of human agents. And the further into the future you project, the harder it is to extrapolate from present trends. 

It's like a game of chess. Good players think ahead, several moves deep. But each subsequent move in that calculation is exponentially more complex than the previous move, because each subsequent move is contingent on which of all the possible moves opened up by the previous move the player will opt for. Each player's next move must consider multiple chains or nested outcomes of hypothetical moves and countermoves, branching into infinity. 

Nothing could be more destabilizing to predictable consequences than the wave interference generated by so many competing agents. So many countervailing choices by other agents, which neutralize your singular choice. 

5. It might be objected that my argument commits a category mistake, inasmuch as the uniformity of nature is categorically different from the libertarian ability of human agents. 

But in a couple of respects, that's an arbitrary place to draw the line:

i) If predictable consequences are a necessary condition of praiseworthy or blameworthy choices, then it's ad hoc to insist on the uniformity of nature, while allowing human freedom to run riot. For that undermines the principle at least as much as heightened divine intervention. 

ii) Furthermore, the dichotomy isn't nearly that cut-and-dried. Human agents manipulate natural processes to produce outcomes that would not occur if they let nature run its course. Examples are endless. Consider just one: the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. In one sense, that exploited the laws of nature to produce a chemical weapon. However, that combined natural elements in unnatural ways. 

In sum, the freewill defense appeals to two divergent principles. They tug in opposing directions.