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

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Paul L. Manata © 2011
themselves remain contingent.” 62 But this is not contrary to determinism, which
states that given the determining conditions, then the determined event must
happen. This is not to say that the event must happen necessarily regardless of
any prior conditions. Does synchronic contingency demand a more robust
contingency? Perhaps the idea that we really can do other than God decrees—
not in any of the compatibilist or conditional senses above, but that we could
really do any action we want regardless of God’s decree? That is: same decree,
possible different futures. If not, then compatibilism must be affirmed. If so, then
RT must be denied. But those who press this view seem to think determinism
rules out ‘contingency.’ And the Reformed confessions affirm contingency, for
example in chapter 5.2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith we read, “by the
same providence, he ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second
causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.” So, it is argued, if we have
contingency we cannot have determinism, and vice versa. Is this true? Let’s see.
E.3.1 Contingency
E.3.1.1 Epistemic contingency
In historic Reformed theology, one sense of contingency or open futures is
epistemic. That is, we humans don’t know the future, and so it appears
contingent to us. But Reformers also thought God’s foreknowledge shows that
the future is in fact settled, and thus that our actions are necessary (in a sense
defined below). Thus, Pictet remarks that God’s complete knowledge of all events
covers “not only those things which we call necessary, but also those things
which we term contingent, and, which, although determined by God, are really
contingent in respect of us, seeing they arise from a concurrence unknown to us
62 J. Martin Bac, Perfect Will Theology: Divine Agency in Reformed Scholasticism as
Against Suarez, Episcopius, Descartes, and Spinoza (Brill Academic, 2010), p. 395,
emphasis mine.