Philosophical Theology

I’ve decided to interact with this article by Kevin DeYoung on free will and divine foreknowledge. Although the piece is over fifteen years old and the author may have possibly refined his views since then, I nonetheless believe the article typifies the uncritical handling of this Reformed distinctive among contemporary leaders in the tradition. 

Why another article?

My primary lament and the impetus for writing (once again) on this particular subject is due to the lack of doctrinal unity among teachers and pastors in the Reformed tradition when it comes to the rudimentary principles of how God’s sovereignty relates to free will. A related concern is how leaders in the Reformed tradition do not appreciate, or seem to mind, how far we’ve drifted in the formulation and articulation of this essential Reformed doctrine. The current climate is underscored by a widely lauded contemporary commentary by Chad Van Dixhoorn on the Westminster Confession of Faith, which teaches contrary to the Reformed doctrine of the divine decree by lending approval to middle knowledge. What’s significantly impactful is the commentary is being used to train elders in the Reformed tradition. Consequently, theological error on perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Reformed thought is being propagated through the ordained teaching ministry of the church.

To exacerbate matters, a growing number of soteriological Calvinists tend to look to historian types, like Richard Muller, for answers on free will and not to scholastic theologians for reasons that elude my grasp. I’ll leave those curiosities to the more insightful and gifted of our day who are more adept at analyzing trends and making predictions. Maybe they even saw this one coming.

Lastly but still by way of introduction, the understanding of this discussion is so shrouded in confusion that the theological options in the minds of many have been reduced to two, necessitarianism and incompatibilism. Unfortunately, both views are incorrect from a historically Reformed perspective, but more importantly cannot be reconciled with the catholic church’s theology proper when taken to their respective logical conclusions.

A word of caution:

Before proceeding I should warn up front, what follows can appear overly technical, but it’s not. That is not to say that there aren’t terms of art and abstract concepts that first must be grasped in order to appreciate the doctrine under consideration. But that shouldn’t surprise us given that we’re talking about how human freedom relates to God’s will, which is doctrine that must be held with special prudence and care.

With all that aside, I’ll make just a few comments on key excerpts from the article in the hope that more attention might be given not to personalities or choosing teams but to hard and prayerful thinking. It’s high time for us to put down the partisan pom-poms and to get a brain cramp in the pursuit of unity over high theological truth.

Basic definitions:

Some Christians affirm omniscience but deny free will (Calvinists).  Other Christians try to affirm both (Arminians). 

Calvinism does not deny free will. Calvinsm denies a particular kind of free will.

Of course, I’m not going to settle such a long standing debate with a single blog post, but I do want to think for a few moments about whether divine omniscience and free will are compatible.  That is, can the Arminian have it both ways and affirm that God knows everything and that we free wills?

DeYoung is defining free will as libertarian free will. (That becomes clear later.) DeYoung undoubtedly should know that Calvinism affirms some concept of free will and that it must somehow be compatible with theological determinism, which from a Reformed perspective grounds God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. 

By omniscience I mean that God knows everything. A related term (that can also be used as a synonym for omniscience) is foreknowledge. By foreknowledge I mean that God knows everything that is yet to happen in the future. 

Omniscience is not equivalent to foreknowledge both within Calvinism and Arminianism. From a Reformed perspective foreknowledge pertains chiefly (but not solely) to future occurrences, whereas omniscience is a broader concept that includes not just things that will occur but, also, God’s natural knowledge of all necessary truths, including all possibilities. Omniscience even encompasses things that would occur but will not occur. For instance, there are contingent counterfactuals that God has determined to be true and, consequently, freely knows in his omniscience that will never occur in history. Consequently, there are counterfactuals that are not foreknown to occur actually that are nonetheless included in God’s foreknowledge and omniscience. In short, foreknowledge is simply a subset of exhaustive omniscience. They’re not synonymous concepts.

By free will I mean free will as Arminians define it. Arminians argue that we have a libertarian free will, which simply put means that we have the power of contrary choice; or to put it another way, that our choices can be otherwise than they are.

Not all incompatibilist libertarians affirm that every free choice can be otherwise, such as Frankfurt libertarians like William Lane Craig. 

The most distinguishing feature of libertarian freedom is not the ability to do otherwise but that genuine freedom is incompatible with theological determinism. Consequently, an innate ability to choose otherwise needn’t be accompanied by an external freedom or temporal ability to do so. (Consider Locke on action and Frankfurt on intention to act.)

Not off to a great start:

Out of the chute, DeYoung’s treatment of the subject does not appear to be as careful as it might be on fundamental definitions and concepts. But before getting into the weeds, let’s address a few less crucial missteps.

Some less consequential clarifications:

Let’s put these terms in a typical scenario. Tomorrow morning I will open my freezer and choose whether to have Eggo waffles for breakfast or Eggo french toast. Arminians and Calvinists (although not Openness theologians) believe that an omniscient God has foreknowledge of what choice I will make.

In passing we might note that there are more options than just two, unless the options are placed in a mutually exclusive disjunct, for instance: Eggo waffles or not Eggo waffles. (The law of the excluded middle is useful here.) Also, in passing, we may note that Open Theists (e.g., Greg Boyd) most certainly do affirm God’s foreknowledge of some free choices prior to their occurrence. Open Theism distinguishes God knowing things early on from before. The system allows for some future occurrences to be settled by “character formation” such as Judas’ betrayal. This view also claims not to deny omniscience per se but exhaustive omniscience. It posits that God knows all truth, but that some choices that would occur aren’t yet true, therefore, they aren’t objects of knowledge. My point is, even heretical views need to be represented fairly.

Back to significant concerns:

I have power of contrary choice. I may choose the waffles; I may choose the french toast. The outcome of my choice is not fixed. It is up to my free will to decide.

DeYoung is depicting Arminianism and intending that remark to be a strike against it but it isn’t. It’s both incorrect and too simplistic. Indeed, (a) it is up to one’s free will to decide and (b) the outcome will precisely be as God foreknows (even if neither waffles nor french toast are chosen). Consequently, in one sense the outcome is “fixed” in Arminianism, just like it is in Calvinism.

Two brief elaborations on (a) and (b):

(a’) That an outcome is “up to one’s free will to decide” is misleading in its simplicity. For instance, who killed Saul? Well, Scripture answers this question in two ways by teaching both God and Saul. Consequently, it is false that our choices are not up to us even though they are up to God. In Reformed thought an ultimate cause is compatible with a proximate cause.

(b’) In another sense free choices are not necessary. Both sides should agree that their respective theological systems affirm that what an agent would freely choose is only contingently true and as such, free choices are not necessary in a significant sense. Consequently, since both sides should agree on necessity in these two distinct and meaningful ways, it’s hard to find how these observations can be used against Arminianism by Calvinists. In short, Arminianism and Calvinism agree on what’s called the necessity of the consequence while in unison denying the necessity of the consequent.

By this understanding, we are led to believe that divine omniscience, or foreknowledge in this case, is wholly compatible with libertarian free will. God’s knowing what I will choose is simply a knowledge based on foreseen evidence, and this knowledge in no way determines my choice of waffles. 

Foreseen “evidence” seems more akin to Open Theism than Arminianism. (It’s comparable to the difference between rational belief through inductive inference and concrete knowledge through empirical observation.) Secondly, foreknowledge has no determining power. From a Reformed perspective it presupposes the decree. DeYoung acknowledges this latter point later.

God simply looked into the future and saw what my choice would be. It is as if he put into his cosmic VCR the tape marked “Kevin’s Breakfast October 27.” 

The most formidable Arminians are Molinists who do not advocate for such a crass view of foreknowledge. They’re rightly turned off by such caricatures. These thinkers affirm middle knowledge, which is prior to the creative decree and not according to looking down the corridors of time, as it were.

The essence of the debate:

God’s knowledge is certain, but my choice is in no way necessary or fixed; it is free and can be otherwise. Thus, according to the Arminian, foreknowledge co-exists just fine with free will.

That too was to be a depiction of Arminianism, but it’s at best unclear.

DeYoung suggests that Arminianism entails that a choice is in no way necessary or fixed. It’s not just relevant that this is not an entailment of sophisticated Arminianism but that Calvinism and Arminianism actually share significant points of agreement on necessity. To punctuate matters, the better Arminians (e.g, Molinists) require the fixity (unchanging truth values) of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom in order to make room for middle knowledge. So, perhaps DeYoung has a different necessity in mind. Let’s see. Given that DeYoung finds libertarian freedom incompatible with divine foreknowledge, he will need something to ground God’s foreknowledge of the decree in order to avoid his own present charge against Arminianism and its trajectory toward full blown Open Theism.

Let’s get precise:

But this is not so. Here’s why. If an omniscient God has foreknowledge as to my choice of waffles, than this knowledge must be of an event that is fixed and necessary.

DeYoung appears to commit a common philosophical error that sharper Arminians are quick to point out. If the discussion is ever going to advance, this nuance needs to be appreciated.

Assume that p: necessarily, if God foreknows x, then x will occur (major premise). It is to commit a modal fallacy to suggest that x is itself necessary when p2 is affirmed: God foreknows x (minor premise). In other words, given p and p2, then it’s impossible for x not to occur. But that impossibility is merely a logical implication (modus ponens) of the two premises, which Arminians do not dispute. The material point is that although it is necessary by logical implication that x occur given p and p2, x is nonetheless contingently true, which Calvinism and Arminianism affirm. The necessity of the consequence of the deduction does not imply the metaphysical necessity of the consequent.

The difference between the two camps is not over those two concepts but over the question of whether (a) God determines free choice x, making x a decretive truth that’s an object of God’s free knowledge, or (b) x is an ungrounded truth and an object of divine middle knowledge. Consequently, the free will debate is not over (i) whether God’s foreknowledge, which contemplates an antecedent state of affairs, is a sufficient condition for a specific outcome or (ii) whether a foreknown outcome is a necessary truth. Both systems affirm the former and deny the latter. Furthermore, with respect to the latter point of agreement, both positions concur that there are possible worlds in which x is not true, which means x is not itself necessary.

Actually, we can just as easily leave foreknowledge out of the equation since foreknowledge presupposes truth. We may simply state that it follows by logical implication (or consequence) that a free choice will occur if it is true that it will occur. However, that Smith will choose x does not mean that Smith’s choice is absolutely or metaphysically necessary. It merely implies that the free choice (consequent) will occur (as God foreknows). If that were not the case, then the counterfactual would be true in all possible worlds, which presents other doctrinal and philosophical problems we won’t develop here.

Either DeYoung has made a modal error and overstated the Reformed position on necessity, or he has not distinguished his view from the consequence necessity Calvinists share with Arminians. Either way, Calvinism was not represented as a suitable alternative to Arminianism – though without an antidote to Arminianism, Open Theism remains a philosophical option, albeit not a theological one.

Don’t even go there:

If a Calvinist digs in to argue that necessarily God foreknows x, then such a person will rid himself of the illicit transfer fallacy but at the high cost of denying God’s absolute freedom, which some classical theists have done for other reasons. Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom would become objects of God’s natural knowledge and essential to personhood.

Unfortunately, this modal error among professing Calvinists is exploited in certain circles in an effort to deny the theological determinism of Calvinism. Libertarian thinkers are often clever enough to detect the fallacy committed by Calvinists, which tends toward absolute necessity and at least the implicit denial of God’s freedom, and they run with that error to promote Arminian ends, even sometimes under the guise of historical Reformed thought! For instance, Richard Muller, if not also some of his disciples, has gained a seat at Reformed table on this matter, even in spite of rigorous refutations by analytic philosophers in the Reformed tradition – for instance here, here and here. (Michael Preciado, James Anderson and Paul Manata respectively.)

A bridge too far:

Suppose God knows for certain that tomorrow morning I will choose the waffles. Then if I were to ask you, “What will I choose, the waffles or the french toast?” All of you would say, with certainty, “You will choose the waffles.” My choice cannot be otherwise. If it could be otherwise, then the possibility exists that God in his foreknowledge is mistaken. 

We need to slow this buggy down. The possibility of choosing contrary to God’s foreknowledge does not logically imply the possibility of God being wrong. Since counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are contingent truths, they’re neither necessary nor impossible occurrences. They exist as possibilities in all possible worlds. But God being wrong requires an impossible world. Consequently, to expose such a mismatch is a tall order, which I don’t think can be done, at least not on Molinism’s terms.

Winding down:

But if God’s foreknowledge is infallible, then what he knows will certainly come to pass. So when I open the freezer tomorrow morning, although the choice may seem very free to me, in reality my choice cannot be other than waffles. It is a fixed and necessary consequence that I will eat waffles and not french toast.

Here DeYoung is saying that although the choice may seem like a free choice, it’s not actually free because it’s a necessary “consequence” of God’s foreknowledge. At the risk of repeating myself, what seems to escape DeYoung’s attention is that the necessary consequence of God’s foreknowledge of the choice merely implies that the choice logically follows from God’s foreknowledge of the choice. It does not imply that the choice is intrinsically (in and of itself) metaphysically necessary or that there is no principle of alternative possibilities under identical antecedent conditions. In order to reach the correct Reformed conclusion, it must be established that God’s foreknowledge is secured only by causal divine determinism yet without interrupting creaturely freedom. In other words, it must be maintained that although causal divine determinism does not imply absolute or metaphysical necessity, it does ground divine foreknowledge, while establishing the very possibility of contingent counterfactuals, even without violating creaturely freedom. (Theological Determinism is a beautiful thing!) Consequently, by not establishing the need for causal divine determinism to ground God’s foreknowledge of the decree, what claim does one have on the doctrine of divine foreknowledge over the Arminian’s? (Some Calvinists have tried to do this by classifying God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom under his natural knowledge instead of under divine free knowledge, which would limit God’s ability to actualize all possibilities.)

The question upon which one’s free-will doctrine stands or falls:

It’s axiomatic that (a) a choice is free if it’s morally relevant and (b) God has exhaustive omniscience and foreknowledge of free choices. The pivotal question is whether a free choice is indeterminately free or compatible with causal divine determinism. If choices are indeterminately free, then they can be otherwise. If they are causally determined, then they cannot be otherwise, yet can be free. (Another way of framing the debate is to ask what makes a possible counterfactual of creaturely freedom actually true?)

Where’s the beef?

At the end of the day, I just don’t recognize Calvinism or Arminianism in DeYoung’s article as it relates to free will, necessity and theological determinism. If my observation is correct, then there was no clear case made for Calvinism and no internal critique of Arminianism. Although I find that unfortunate, I don’t find it surprising. Philosophical theology is widely ignored by the theological training arm of the church with few exceptions (e.g., Dr. James Anderson, RTS Charlotte).

Although I appreciate that DeYoung was “not going to settle such a long standing debate with a single blog post” – it’s unclear to me why the watershed issue was not even identified, let alone minimally developed. What Arminianism denies, which seems veiled in DeYoung’s treatment of the subject, is causal divine determinism and compatibilist freedom. In short, the Reformed alternative to libertarian freedom and foreknowledge is not that choices are necessary in either of the ways discussed above.

Of course, DeYoung may have refined his views since writing the article. Let’s assume he has so not to miss the point. The Gospel Coalition was willing to publish the piece and it still resides on the Clearly Reformed website, so it’s fair to ask whether site administrators or any of DeYoung’s peers over the past fifteen years have recognized any problems with his critique of Arminianism and representation of Reformed thought.* While we’re at it, how many Reformed pastors and teachers have noticed or just don’t mind the serious errors in Van Dixhoorn’s treatment of the same subject? These aren’t criticisms but they are sincere concerns. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Reformed community has plenty of reasons to be concerned over the preponderance of disagreement in her ranks on at least the conflicting ways in which the subject of free will and the divine decree should be articulated. By way of example:

R.C. Sproul denied determinism yet affirmed “self-determination.” Sproul also rejected spontaneity of choice, whereas Douglas Kelly has favored it. Tom Nettles favors determinism whereas Burk Parsons was relieved to learn it is not an entailment of Reformed Theology. R. Scott Clark denies middle knowledge whereas Chad Van Dixhoorn affirms it. D.A. Carson and Richard Muller disagree on the freedom to do otherwise. Muller has also claimed that Reformed theology does not entail a form of determinism,** whereas John Frame, James Anderson, Greg Welty, Paul Helm and Paul Manata all recognize that Reformed theology operates under a robust principle of determinism. 

Closing:

It’s indubitable that if there is agreement among Reformed leaders, it is not obvious! A concern we should all share is that the differences in the articulation of this subject cannot be shrugged off as merely semantic. Would we be so careless as to allow Reformed leaders to define faith, justification or divine impassibility any which way? Or would that lead to too much confusion and a denial of our confession of faith?

Although conceptual distinctions and associated terminology have been significantly refined over the years, it’s not difficult to see that the Westminster standards are committed to theological determinism. Consequently, if the Reformed community wants to have a common voice against Arminian philosophical thought and propagate its own tradition without internal confusion, there needs to be a monster refresh. Thankfully, those who are already bringing Christian theology in contact with contemporary analytic philosophy can usually touch their disagreements with opposing and hostile views with a pin. That’s because Christian philosophers are typically operating according to the same tagging of terms to concepts. At the very least, Turretin was born over 400 years ago and Edwards’ Freedom of the Will was first published three centuries ago. Not surprisingly the debate has advanced, but that’s not to say that the Westminster standards cannot be understood in contemporary philosophical terms or that the standards do not clearly put forth a doctrine of compatibilsm (i.e., theological determinism and free will, as opposed to libertarian freedom and its integral denial of theological determinism). Or as philosopher Michael Preciado aptly puts it in his disputation against Richard Muller’s esoteric understanding of determinism and compatibilism, “The Reformed Orthodox and modern compatibilism may not use the same terms but they share the same concepts.”

Final recalibration:

At the outset DeYoung denied free will as a tenet of Calvinism. Later he said he was referring to libertarian free will. It remains unclear to me from the article whether DeYoung believes in genuine freedom, let alone what he thinks are the conditions for it. Although I suspect DeYoung affirms genuine freedom and moral responsibility, he tries to argue philosophically against libertarian free will in reductio ad absurdum fashion and comes up short. Essentially, DeYoung has argued: Necessarily, if God knows the future, then choices are not free. God knows the future, therefore choices are not free. Consequently, choices are necessary. Therefore, Arminianism, given free will, cannot account for divine foreknowledge. Skilled Arminians get their own way against such polemics against the compatibility of libertarian freedom and divine foreknowledge, regardless of how necessity is intended. At the very least (a) Arminians can play the illicit transfer of necessity card or else (b) violently agree that foreknowledge implies a fixed outcome. Consequently, because in this present context metaphysical necessity denies Reformed thought and the necessary of the consequence is a point of agreement between Arminianism and Calvinism, more needs to be said to establish that Calvinism adequately accounts for divine foreknowledge without undermining freedom and moral responsibility.

We all should agree that some agents sometimes act freely. So, the free will debate really turns on just one distilled compound question. Is theological determinism compatible with free agency and necessary for exhaustive divine foreknowledge? If it’s not, then given moral responsibility and exhaustive divine foreknowledge, libertarian freedom remains a viable option. Yet if libertarian leads to implicit heresy and there are no other good reasons to accept the incompatibilist thesis given that compatibilist freedom adequately accounts for moral responsibility and exhaustive divine foreknowledge, then given the common ground of genuine freedom, it would seem that our freedom is compatible with theological determinism. 

* About six years later DeYoung affirmed that the unregenerate chooses sin by necessity. (I learned this days after I wrote my piece.) In the context it appears that at least moral necessity is in view and perhaps three other types of necessity (following Turretin). DeYoung also asserts that the fallen will, which is bound to wickedness, is nonetheless self-determined.  Self-determination surely does not commit one to a Reformed view of the decree, nor does it necessarily imply disagreement, though it is often associated with agent-causation and incompatibilist freedom. Consequently, it’s hard to determine exactly what DeYoung actually thinks about these things. It all seems rather murky to me. 

DeYoung offers: “Reformed theology denies that our choices can be other than God has decreed.”

That is true and I am eager to believe that DeYoung has Reformed reason to say that! But it’s fair to ask how he arrives at his conclusion. If DeYoung’s conclusion is based on the necessity of the consequence (a choice logically must follow from God’s foreknowledge of the choice), then his bottom line conclusion is correct but not very interesting. Molinists can say the same thing (though they’d likely substitute “will be” for “can be”). Yet if DeYoung believes that choices cannot be otherwise because of the necessity of the consequent, then he’s affirming an aberrant view and denying contingency as it relates to free choice. God would have incorporated into the decree facts he knows according to his natural knowledge and not according to his free knowledge. 

From a consistently Reformed perspective, the basis for foreknowledge and the reason choices cannot be other than what God has decreed is because as part of the decree God has determined and, therefore, freely knows the causal relationship between external states of affairs and the formation of internal intentions of the will. Unfortunately, the concepts of theological determinism and compatibilist freedom is conspicuously absent in the discussions I’ve referenced. 

** Quotes below, in italics, are taken from: Richard A. Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017)


Studies of the older Reformed theology, whether of Calvin or of “Calvinism,” particularly when the early modern debates over Arminius, Arminianism, and other forms of synergistic theology have been the focus of investigation, have quite consistently identified Reformed theology as a form of determinism. (p. 19)

Muller’s project is to challenge that widely held view. In his effort to do so, he doesn’t distinguish fatalism from theological determinism. He allows for the determination of some things but not all things. 
 
The thought of Jonathan Edwards is paradigmatic of this new determinism, and to the extent that Edwards has been identified as a “Calvinist,” his work accounts for much of the more recent identification of Reformed theology as deterministic. (pp. 19-20)
 
The Reformed or “Calvinists,” as they are all too frequently identified, have been viewed as pairing almost dualistically “the nothingness of man” with “the overmastering power of God,” and, accordingly, as teaching a fundamentally predestinarian or deterministic theology—whether in utter accord with Calvin's thought or in a further, negative development of it. (p. 21)
 
Despite a considerable amount of scholarship that has reassessed orthodox Reformed theology, these readings of scholasticism, Aristotelian philosophy, and the language of fourfold causality, together with the identification of Reformed thought as a form of determinism, indeed, as a predestinarian metaphysic, have continued to be made by critics of the older Reformed theology, whether Arminian or nominally Reformed. This reading of Reformed understandings of necessity and freedom has also been affirmed by various modern Reformed writers who advocate a determinist or, as it has more recently been identified, compatibilist line of theological formulation, often in the line of Jonathan Edwards. These assumptions about the deterministic nature of Calvinism have been absorbed both positively and negatively in much modern literature on the subject of divine will and its relationship to human free choice with the result that Calvinist or Reformed thought has been described, almost uniformly, by both opponents and advocates, as a kind of determinism, often compatibilism or soft determinism—with little or no concern for the possible anachronistic application of the terms. (pp. 21-22)
 
In short, an understanding of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed theology as a variety of fatalism or determinism, despite early modern Reformed claims to the contrary, became the dominant line in modern discussion. Arguably, this line of thought is prevalent because of the loss of fluency in the scholastic language of the early modern Reformed, particularly in the distinctions used to reconcile the divine willing of all things, the sovereignty of grace, and overarching divine providence with contingency and freedom, not merely epistemically but ontically understood as the possibility or things and effects to be otherwise. In addition, not a few of the proponents and critics of the Reformed doctrine of free choice and divine willing have confused the specifically soteriological determination of the Reformed doctrine of predestination with a “divine determinism of all human actions,” presumably including such actions as buttering one’s toast in the morning or taking what Jeremy Bentham once called an “anteprandial circumgyration” of his garden. (pp. 22-23) [Bold emphasis mine.]

Muller seems willing to grant God’s determination of salvation, just not the divine determination of all things. It’d be interesting to know where he grounds God’s knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. 

Muller’s interpretation of Edwards’ view of determinism is obviously his foil. Unfortunately, even when not dealing with Edwards, Muller conflates theological determinism with metaphysical necessity and fatalism, so he’s either unfamiliar with the distinction or something worse is at play. (Soft determinist / compatibilist refutations are linked above.) 

Whether Muller got Edwards or Turretin right is not my concern. My concern is his novel take on the Westminster confession and lack of ability to deal satisfactorily with philosophical thinkers in the Reformed tradition, like Anderson, Manata, and Helm.

It’s noteworthy that Muller’s effort to dismiss Anderson’s and Manata’s scholarly work falls flat. Muller implies a third way of thinking of things:

The fundamental mistake in Anderson and Manata’s approach is that they assume that modern theories of libertarianism and compatibilism are the only two options for arguing free will.  (Muller, p. 4, fn. 4)


Anderson has this to say in response to that howler:

Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of two theses:

1. The free will thesis: Some people sometimes act freely and with moral responsibility.

2. The incompatibility thesis: Freedom and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism.

This is consistent with the contemporary literature (we cite five prominent scholars—Van Inwagen, Kane, Pereboom, Ginet, and Vihvelin—in support of our definition). Both libertarians and compatibilists affirm the free will thesis. The debate between them focuses on the incompatibility thesis: libertarians affirm that thesis, while compatibilists (the clue is in the name) reject it. Here’s the crucial point: the incompatibility thesis is either true or false (given a consistent definition of ‘determinism’). There’s no logical third option here, unless you take the view that the incompatibility thesis itself is incoherent. (If Prof. Muller thinks that, it would be fascinating to know why.)

It’s hard to give serious attention to Muller’s project in light of his conceptual collapse and his third way denial the law of of excluded middle. 

Then there’s this assessment from Paul Helm’s abstract on Muller’s estimation of Jonathan Edwards’ supposed departure in this area of theology: “Far from being a champion of confessional Reformed theology on the will, as he has been thought to be in modern times, Muller claims that Edwards was in fact a novel and divisive influence.” (When it comes to Turretin, it seems to me that Helm and Muller could have different interpretations of his necessity of event.)

Also this, by Michael Preciado! 

In any event, all of this underscores the lack of unity among soteriological Calvinists. So, full circle, I would like to think that DeYoung if not also Van Dixhoorn might very well stand with Anderson and against Muller on the Westminster standards, but I can’t be certain until articulations become more explicit (DeYoung and Van Dixhoorn) and less conciliatory toward Molinism (solely Van Dixhoorn). Muller, on the other hand, appears to be a forgone conclusion, but I mustn’t deny my Calvinism. Much is still possible!