Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Reformed Theology - Analytic ...

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
of Calvinism scares me; I'm not sure how to distinguish him from the devil.” 2
Respected theologians and philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls claim RT
suggests that God is worse than a hideous earthy dictator who “tortures babies,”
and they also fly “violently in the face of some of our clearest and deepest moral
intuitions.” 3 The highly regarded William Lane Craig remarks that “on this view
God is not only the cause of sin and evil, but becomes evil Himself, which is
absurd. By the same token, all human responsibility for sin has been removed.” 4
These remarks are not solely the complaints of contemporary Christians. Going
back to John Wesley we see similar concerns, for example, in his sermon titled
“Free Grace,” Wesley remarks that the above Reformed doctrines “represent the
high God . . . as more cruel, false, and unjust than the devil!” 5 Going back further
to the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, the above doctrines purportedly show
that “God’s justice with respect to the wicked vanishes, and a manifest cruelty
and wickedness is discerned in God.” 6 It is clear from this representative sample
that many find these Reformed teachings intolerable.
I will make a few remarks about the above quotes. First, the term ‘Calvinism’ is
used a lot. Outside the Reformed tradition ‘Calvinism’ and ‘Reformed theology’
are often co-­‐referring in that they both refer to the Reformed Teachings
mentioned above, i.e., RT. I will explain below how I am using the term
‘Reformed theology.’ Second, the above quotes should not be brushed off as
2 See , last
accessed 7/1/11.
3 David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality
(Oxford University Press, 2011,) pp. 74, 78.
4 William Lane Craig, “Response to Paul Kjoss Helseth,” in Four Views on Divine
Providence, eds. Stanley N. Gundry and Dennis Jowers (Zondervan, 2011), p. 61.
5 See < http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-­‐wesley/the-­‐sermons-­‐of-­‐john-­‐wesley-­‐1872-­‐
edition/sermon-­‐128-­‐free-­‐grace/>, last accessed 7/1/11.
6 Luis De Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia, trans. Alfred J.
Freddoso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), vii. p. 139.