Refuting the "Calvinist Conundrum" of Jerry Walls

In a presentation available on YouTube, the Arminian philosopher, Jerry Walls, presents what he calls a "Calvinist Conundrum".

His whole presentation is available here and the relevant section for our purposes starts at 19:55 and runs through to 23:29.

Walls presents the conundrum with the following premises and conclusion:

1. God truly loves all persons

2. Truly to love someone is to desire their well being and to promote their true flourishing as much as you can.

3. The well being and true flourishing of all persons is to be found in a right relationship with God, a saving relationship in which we love and obey him.

4. God could determine all persons freely to accept a right relationship with himself and be saved.

Therefore, 5. All persons will be saved.

As Walls points out, few evangelicals will accept the fifth premise, as not all persons will be saved. Therefore, he says, one of the four premises must be wrong.

As an Arminian, his choice is simple. He rejects premise 4. For the Arminian, God cannot determine someone to freely accept a relationship with himself. 

Yet premise 4, is a key Calvinist belief (known as irresistible grace in a world where divine determinism is compatible with human free will).

So, says Walls, the Calvinist must reject one of premises 1-3.

In my view, Jerry Walls's conundrum fails because his conclusion 5 does not logically follow from the first four premises.

There is logical leap that he makes here, which is unwarranted. 

Let's look at the first three premises again and then suggest a logical conclusion based on those premises first, before we come to Walls's fourth premise.

1. God truly loves all persons

2. Truly to love someone is to desire their well being and to promote their true flourishing as much as you can.

3. The well being and true flourishing of all persons is to be found in a right relationship with God, a saving relationship in which we love and obey him.

Therefore, 4A. God truly has a desire to save everyone.

Many Calvinists would agree with 4A. Those who don't would likely question either 1 or 2 (i.e. either God does not love everyone or that God can truly love someone but not desire their wellbeing in a saving sense).

Now, if we take our new first conclusion along with Wall's fourth premise (we will call this 4B) we have this:

4A. God truly has a desire to save everyone. 

4B. God could determine all persons freely to accept a right relationship with himself and be saved.

I believe it is clear that Walls's conclusion does not follow logically from 4A and 4B:

Therefore, 5. All persons will be saved. 

For Wall's conclusion to be valid, it rests on a hidden premise. The necessary hidden premise would be this:

4C. God must fulfil any desire he has if he is capable of doing so.

Only if 4C is true would Walls's conclusion 5 be valid. However, it is precisely this hidden assumption that Calvinists reject. For it is that this point precisely that God's sovereignty comes into the equation. God has the right to choose which of his desires he acts on, or rather decides to to act on in his decree, and which he determines will remain mere velleities (wishes or inclinations not acted upon).

Most Calvinists accept that God has desires for some things, considered in themselves, that he nevertheless chooses not to fulfil in his decree because of other conflicting desires or when considering something in light of everything else or in a connected way with everything else. In this context, God can desire the salvation of all when considered simpliciter yet desire the salvation of some and the condemnation of some when considered complexiter and in the light of God's desire to display his own glory and attributes above all else.

For these reasons, the existence of premises 4A and the hidden assumption in 4C, Walls's conundrum fails to present any significant problem for the Calvinist theologian. Rather than being a concundrum, it is a Calvinist explanation of the wisdom, knowledge and sovereignty of God.

 

 

Great Theologians 1: Louis Berkhof

Louis Berkhof (1873-1957)

Louis Berkhof was a Dutch American Reformed theologian. His Systematic Theology (1941) is still one of the finest one-volume summaries of the Reformed faith. The book is particularly dear to me because it was one of the first "serious" theological book I bought not long after I became a Christian in 1987.

I remember being amazed that a single book could seek to cover the whole range of Christian doctrine. I have loved systematic theology ever since.

One of the things I still love about Berkhof's work is that he represents a kind of mainstream, centre-cut Reformed theology, which rightly or wrongly I have always thought of as the standard by which to judge other Reformed theologians idiosyncrasies. Berkhof never seemed to have any. He was fully in line with the Reformed confessions and a standard Reformed understanding of the Scriptures. 

Obviously, he writes from the Dutch Reformed tradition, which I hold in the highest esteem, second only to the Scottish Presbyterian tradition, which it closely resembles, of course.

Like many Dutch-American Reformed theologians of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century, Berkhof was born in the Netherlands and moved to the United States with his family in childhood. In Berkhof's case, he moved to American as a boy in 1882. The family settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has remained an important centre for Dutch Reformed people in the USA.

He studied at college in Grand Rapids and then Calvin Theological Seminary in that same city. He became pastor of a Christian Reformed Church in Allendale, MI in 1900. He pursued further theological studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, gaining a BD in 1902. He studied under the likes of B. B. Warfield and Geerhardus Vos at Princeton.

After another pastorage in Grand Rapids, he joined the faculty of Calvin Theological Seminary and 1906 and worked there for the next four decades, retiring in 1944. Among his many students, the most famous is probably Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), the great presuppositionalist apologist and theologian.

As well as his famous Systematic Theology Berkhof wrote many other important theological works, including The History of Christian Doctrines and Principles of Biblical Interpretation. He also produced two simplified versions of his magnum opus suitable for younger readers or new Christians, which he named Summary of Christian Doctrine and Manual of Christian Doctrine.

Clearly, a book written in 1941 is of its time. It engages with theology as the discipline stood at that time, though Berkhof's main focus is on the Scriptures and the Reformed creeds, rather than say liberal or neo-orthodox theologians. However, given that Berkhof's treatment is thoroughly Bible-based, the book's value cannot diminish or date very much and certainly remains one of the most useful explanations of classic Reformed theology.