Determinism or Indeterminism, That is the Question - by Henry Smidstra

Determinism or Indeterminism, That is the Question

As a 17 year old, I dropped out of school and became a mechanic’s apprentice in a shop owned by a Dutch-Canadian immigrant serving a largely Dutch-Canadian, largely Calvinist, clientele. Of course we also served clients of other religious orientations. It was here, in the practicalities of diagnosis and auto repair that my Calvinism was tested and broadened, recognizing also that Calvinism is not a monolithic entity. Regarding the failings of their cars the customers often provided their own diagnosis and my Boss had instilled in me that the customer is always right, even when they are wrong; I was just to ignore their diagnosis and do my own, but I did store some of their peculiar attributions in my memory.  Consider the time when called out to do a service call on a customer, a regular Church going Calvinist, whose car would not start. Sometimes I might hear something to the effect that it was God’s will that the car would not start since ultimately nothing happens without God’s sovereign will. “Maybe God wants me to suffer so I can become a better person; or perhaps to avoid some unknown greater calamity”; or I might hear, “Everything happens for my good.” I would meekly query, “You really want me to try and start your car?” To myself I would silently consider the fear that for me to try to get that car started might just be contravening the will of God, or perhaps futile anyway since it was fated not to start. Alter all it is not nice to meddle with Mother Nature, as some more secular customers might phrase it. If it’s God’s will that the car won’t start; who am I to meddle with that! “Yes, see if you can get it running,” the client might say; so I usually could get the car running, pointing to some determining causes other than God’s will; but I kept my adolescent theological reflection to myself.

Over the years, I would come to the conclusion that there was considerable reductionism going on, and that often the sovereignty issue was confused with fatalism or absolute determinism. Sometimes I heard logic such as, “I’m not going to spend any money on fixing my brakes yet; if it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go”; or, “God will protect me.” With some humour I might respond, “Don’t burn out your guardian angels!”   I could sense that such theology was more sophistry than a true theology.  Such reductionism left out any consideration of human responsibility or any number of other more technical environmental determiners. This so-called orthodox Calvinism or secular fatalism in the world of car repair, I surmised, reflected subjective biases and attributions, often confusing correlations with causes.  I worked in a Canadian GM town where there was a popular prejudicial theory that Chrysler products were inferior and just would not start when it rained. If called out in the rain to a Chrysler owner whose car would not start, I might hear such attribution biases, either of a Calvinist or secularist kind, attributing the problem to the brand, or to the rain, as well as to God’s will. A Chrysler product owner would usually not blame themselves for choosing to purchase a Chrysler product in the first place. I would gently steer a root cause of worn out ignition wires that short out when wet, and to a probable cause of lack of maintenance by the owner. “The wires should have been replaced a long time ago!” I might say. Such experiences influenced my reflections on the relationship between God’s sovereign will for our lives and this world, and for our daily life’s responsibilities and the choices we make. It is a comfort to live in a world that is ultimately not a matter of chaos and chance, nor left up to the autonomous self-interested designs of human beings.  God’s sovereign will for life, however, does include human responsibility and stewardship, especially to do the good! In my training as mechanic, learning diagnostic skills and making appropriate repairs was central, critical. Choices, timely action and interventions are necessary in the events of our lives. To simply imply that everything happens for our good, for a reason, as God’s will, and for instance, and not to maintain our automobiles, is irresponsible. This is as true for our cars as it is for our environment, our socio-economic and political lives, and for the common good.

I have since finished my academic education, struggled through a painful divorce and its aftermath, worked in the criminal justice system for 21 years, and have concluded, that the sovereignty of God and human responsibility issue is paradoxical and at the core a sacred mystery. It is a comfort to believe, that we are forgiven our sins, and to believe that we live in a world that with some thinking, elbow grease, and prayer, things can ultimately make sense, and that we can find a measure of direction and meaning in life to go forward. At times we do struggle in finding God’s will at the level of broken reality, while knowing more clearly at another level what God’s will ultimately is.  Dr. Henry Stob (1981), a seminary professor at Calvin Theological Seminary some years back who had considerable influence on my theological perspectives, writes in an article on Prayer and Providence, that God’s governance of this world is not to be understood deterministically or fatalistically because God is not the sole agent of historical events, nor is God the author of evil. He notes that “…the plan of God, though fixed upon a determinate goal, is flexible in the arrangements of its parts” (p. 92). This implies that sovereignty of God, does not rob human beings of their freedom and responsibility. In regards to the importance of prayer Stob, suggests that God’s plan is not so iron clad and rigid “…to prevent the insertion in it of what may be called the adventitious cries of his petitioning creatures” (p.93).Prayer as communion with God, calls God to be with us in our human messes, it is not simply a request  passively relying  on Him to fix things up; it is a call for God to bless the work of our hands, as feeble and insignificant as that may be.

Professor Stob (1981) writing on miracles in a scientifically understood world notes that miracles only make sense in a world in which events are determined by external causes and not merely left up the chaos or chance. Stob suggests that if we choose to ascribe everything to miracle we simply negate the sacred intervention as anything special. Miracles, he says, “…are only possible in a determinate universe” (p. 25); “The God of order transcends the order he has established and he can act and work in ways that are miraculous” (p.93). Both prayer and science, as well as automobile maintenance, make sense because this is God’s world and He has created it with a determinate order in a basic creation order of grace, an order which He continually upholds for our good for human flourishing. Our core responsibility is a religious-spiritual duty to acknowledge God and give him praise and honour for the marvelous universe he created. However, historically we live in an order distorted by human and systemic sin, yet one that includes the need for human responsiveness and agency to act with thankful and responsible stewardship. In the sciences, we can contemplate and investigate in a sensory way the depth of the marvels of God’s creation. Because the world is one of grace and determinate order, it made the diagnosis work during my labours as mechanic possible and meaningful; there is not an absolute antithesis between nature and grace. In our responsive imaging of our creator, we reflect genuine creativity even if limited and sinful. Sometimes, however, things are not all that clear and at times we are called to work out our salvation in fear and trembling.   Perhaps to use an illustration from the world of art: human beings were not created to paint by number, but to be creators of genuine art, artifacts often produced with considerable effort.

The free will discussion thus need not be reduced narrowly to the religious and metaphysical, and we can speak of human responsibility being necessary in car maintenance as well as in moral philosophy. I am not advocating an either/or, dualism, that we shift from an absolute determinism to another absolute of indeterminism, one typical of our post-modern secular society, one that that does not acknowledge the active hand of God in all of life at all. What I would advocate is looking at the theory or model known as soft determinism, or compatibilism, which suggests that ordinary free will is compatible with determinism.  Holmes Rolston III (1972) offers that John Calvin espoused a  form of soft determinism which holds people  both free and yet determined by divine grace without incompatibility (p. 95).Moral philosopher William Frankena (1963) considers fatalism to be to be inconsistent with moral responsibility but determinism is not, given the absence of totalitarian or other pathological constraints (pp.59, 61). Normally in a free society, irrespective of external environmental determiners, suggests Frankena, “…human beings are or, at least, may be free to do as they choose…in accordance with our own beliefs, desires and character” (p.61).    Soft determinism acknowledges that there is often a multiplicity of interacting factors or determiners to any specific historical event or act, some within human power, some outside the individual human scope of influence, but they do affect inner human motivation and perspective. At the historical level of attribution, soft determinism is a useful theoretical concept indicating human beings as thankful and thoughtful responsible stewards of God’s gifts. We know ourselves as responsible people, suggests Rolston III, “…only when we encounter a God of love and become answerable to his grace. Responsibility is not an obligation, but it is an invitation; not a task but a gift; not a command to work and choose, but a call to love and be loved; not so much God’s precept as his promise” (p116).

In our moral philosophy it is important to avoid reductionism as well as to avoid misattributions which give in to the heuristic laziness of common, human social-cognitions devoid of empathy and love: “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”; or in Kantian style, “when you chose the crime, you chose your own punishment.”   As I moved from hearing attribution-sloppiness as a mechanic, I came face to face with a more ominous one that supports our current model of retribution of our modern North American Criminal justice system. Our system based on the Classical rationalistic Utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham and others, reflects an absolute indeterminism: the criminal simply chooses to do the crime, based on a personal calculus of punishment or reward, and must be punished if he or she makes the wrong choice. Circumstances are considered irrelevant; crime is simply a matter of individual rational choice.  In my opinion, this is simply inconsistent with the facts of reality as well as it being inconsistent and paradoxical for a Calvinist confessing God’s Sovereign will determining everything, and then attributes crime to a simple indeterminate rational choice of an individual. Of course I would not endorse absolute determinism, as indicated above; but endorsing “lock stock and barrel” the radical indeterminism in which our modern criminal justice system is imbedded reflects bifurcated thinking. (I have the same concern about an easy borrowing of libertarian indeterminism as contained in our modern socio-economic theories of laisez faire and neo-liberalism). As well, retributive thinking only looks to a past event in order to assign blame and punish the perpetrator. How does legal punishment bring moral goodness forward? Where is the good sense of that; and where is grace, how is it a labour of love bringing forward that which is due a person by a gracious God?

A “soft determinism” acknowledges that the wrongdoer has made a bad choice; but, that there are also possibly a number of external attenuating circumstances, some social-structural, that have influenced the decision, and determined the events leading the offence.  This does not render the offender morally irresponsible, however, but a broadened moral appraisal of the concept of responsibility is necessary. Popular thought about criminal attribution of blame considers crime basically, deontologically, a breaking of the law, and lawbreakers must be punished. However, punishment as a legal category is past oriented, not very instrumental in producing inner change and motivation to lead us to a safer more peaceful society. A broader moral use of the concept of responsibility than “blameworthy” is necessary, namely the concept of “obligation,” “accountability” to make things right, or to restore harmed relationships. Such an understanding of responsibility contains teleological ends, not just legal punitive ones. Broadened, this would focus not just on broken laws, but on the harm done to people and their future needs.  This would require, as ethicist Frankena (1963) suggests, a mixed ethical theory that combines both the need for rules and laws for the good, and also contain teleological ends for good results and consequences (p. 59). Frankena elaborates further, that since most deontologists hold that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility, they respond to wrongdoing as law-breaking, in a retributivist rather than consequentialist manner (59). However, he holds another opinion, “… that the function of holding people responsible and applying sanctions is not retribution but education, reformation, prevention and encouragement” (p.59).  To his list I would add, affirmation of human worth, healing, reconciliation, and peace. Some circumstances involve a responsibility for a transformative and restorative response from all of us in society for structural change. Some circumstances must also be left up to the mystery of God’s ways and to God’s grace which undergirds all of life….a primacy of grace, of rectification, not of law, judgment and punishment. We as human agents must do justice in love and humility and may not play god, especially the severe god often typical of retributive Calvinism and evangelicalism, supporting hard law and order policies for crime control.  Neither can we leave the governance of our social economic and social lives up to laissez faire irresponsibility. In the area or human responsibility in the area of justice, we exercise it, as Mica suggests, in humility; as an example and demonstration of love in justice (Wolterstorff, 2011).

It is common to speak of justice as having nothing to do with love, mercy and grace. The primacy of a creation order of grace, however, would imply that rule of law though essential, is not sufficient.  All too often in evangelical and Calvinist circles, criminal justice issues are spoken of in a narrow Kantian deontological sense, a retributive sense. This is true as well as in general society; however, one would expect the church to champion the cause of grace and love and restorative justice.  It seems often that the Bible is read and theology done with the assumption of an absolute bifurcation of God’s justice and love, a dualism of God’s righteousness (or justice) and grace. God’s righteousness or justice is often reduced to wrath, to judgment and punishment, as pain application legally sanctioned. Such reductionism is the result of reading retributive imperatives into the Bible, imperatives as absolutes that are just not there. Wolterstorff (2011) has implicated the ancient myth of reciprocity, of retaliation, lex talionis; Rolston III (1972) points to a bifurcation of law and grace as theorized by theologians who created the concept of the covenant of works a generation or so after Calvin. Rolston III, after a thorough reading of Calvin’s works, concludes that Calvin’s, main emphasis is on the primacy of grace, not of law. Rolston III maintains that Calvin’s use of the concept of iustitia Dei, God’s justice or righteousness, is both communicative and distributive, and that law is not alone, but rather law-in-grace (p.80). Commenting on Calvin’s Institutes, (I,X,2) he notes, “Calvin thinks of the righteousness of God  as graciously preserving and supporting, allied with mercy and somewhat an opposite of judgment” (pp. 72-73).  He also points to the ironic fact that in the traditional Reformed theology as presented in the Westminster Confession, righteousness is seen the other way around, where “God’s righteousness is posited as synonymous with judgement and the opposite of mercy” (p. 73). The Judgment of God, according to Rolston III (1972) is a rectifying response to human rejection of Him. Punishment is an expression of God’s sovereign will to express that he has not deserted his creation order of grace, and is also not going to let sin stand in his way; “Redemption reveals that God has always willed to be gracious, [and] still  so wills….”(p.33). 

Some serious thinking by the church about the morally responsible response to crime and justice in society today is sorely needed. I am thankful for theologians, moral philosophers, and criminologists who challenge old myths and worn out beliefs about justice as punishment. If anything, followers of Christ are called in love, faith, and hope, to promote and establish Christ’s health giving rule, as an alternative to the conflicted and bifurcated rule of justice prevalent today. On the evening news this week, I heard that the victims of a brutal rape in India believe that hanging the perpetrators, will, as it was expressed, “send a positive message to society”.  Or again retributive thinking is reflected in the Alberta case of Travis Baumgartner who  yesterday (Sept 11, 2013)received a life sentence without the possibility of applying for parole for 40 years, the harshest sentence handed down in Canada since Arthur Lucas was executed in 1962. Such harsh opinions and sentences, largely symbolic and expressive, are expected to heal the pain of loss by the relatives of the victims of horrendous crime, and it is supposed to appease public sentiment.   Some relatives as secondary victims suggested that nothing can really address the pain experienced, and others suggested that a hanging would be the only satisfying form of justice.  I do understand the justice that relatives of the victims of abuse, homicide and manslaughter really want to experience; but another physical or civil death, as scapegoat as it were, will not bring a loved one back; will it really heal?

One must question just how capital punishment can be a positive response or move life forward in transformed ways. In the attribution of blame, have all the correlative causes been weighed, including the social-cultural ones? Has God’s grace any influence?  As it has been said by so many in the restorative justice field, one can’t get to a good place in a bad way.  God’s will is for rectification and that none should perish! Civil authorities and the public at large may also need to look at their own social-structural responsibilities in cases such as this, in terms of tolerated sexism and domestic violence, or of a culture that is addicted to consumption and espouses unrestricted possessive individualism. This is an opportunity for us as Canadians and North Americans to ponder our own responsibilities in our social governance for the Good.  Stob (1978) maintains, “You cannot live responsibly by a love which is abstracted and divorced from justice, and from the rational and structured elements which constitute justice” (p.139). Followers of Christ, both as individuals and as reflected by the churches to which  they belong, must be champions of a better way leading to the common good, to peace and human flourishing for everyone in society, even our most despised criminals.  Love acts in a dialectal and supportive role with justice, offers Stob (1978); love never acts unjustly, nor does love bypass justice. He suggests that the Christian is not free to deny others their rights or past dues.” But, I am free in Christ to be self-sacrificial and to lay down my very life for the other… [as] declared by Christ to be a mark of his disciples (p.143).

Works Cited

Frankena, W. K. (1963). Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Rolston, H. I. (1972). John Calvin Versus The Westminster Confession. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press.

Stob, H. (1978). Ethical Reflections. Grand Rapids Michigan: William B.Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Stob, H. (1981). Theological Reflections. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Wolterstorff, N. (2011). Justice in love. Grand Rapids Michigan: William B.Eerdmans Publishing Company.