Dr. David Allen recently released his latest book, “Liberating Romans from Reformed Captivity”. One of the things that I have found odd in hearing some of his discussions and reading the book is that he often calls what the Reformed believe “Divine Determinism.”. This is, as you know, not a term that Reformed Christian would typically use to describe our beliefs. It would be akin to us referring to what Allen believes as “Absolute Self Determinism” or even “Godless Autonomy”. Equal weights would demand that if Allen would not like for us to refer to him as a one of the above terms that he should likewise not refer to us as holding to “Divine Determinism”.
As you can imagine (and make sure you are sitting down currently), it came as quite the shock to me that Dr. Allen actually attributed the phrase to none other than Richard Muller!
It’s true – on Page 23 (Kindle Edition) of “Liberating Romans from Reformed Captivity”, Dr. David Allen stated the following:
Reformed scholarship remains divided over whether Calvin’s view necessarily implies what Muller terms “absolute divine determinism.”[59] Yet Calvin’s own statements make it difficult—if not impossible—to avoid the conclusion that he indeed did endorse a form ‘absolute divine determinism.’”
If you are anything like me, when you read something shocking like that you are probably concerned that this has to have been taken out of context. I thought “there’s no way that Muller would positively refer to the Reformed doctrine of election as ‘absolute divine determinism’”!
Allen’s citation (footnote 59) was to Richard Muller’s book “Understanding the Divine in Early Modern Reformed Theology”. In that book, the term “divine determinism” only appears 3 times. One appearance is in the first quote below (which was quoted by Allen above), the second appearance of the term refers back to the first, and the third time is Muller quoting another critic of Reformed Theology.
In what may be regarded as a paradigmatic error of interpretation, David Bentley Hart has claimed that “one cannot grant that John Calvin had any authentic doctrine of divine providence, however often he may have spoken of it; for he quite explicitly and peremptorily denied the distinction between divine will and permission, and so cannot be said to have understood by ‘providence’ anything other than absolute divine determinism.” Hart recognizes that Calvin and other Reformed theologians distinguished between primary and secondary causality—and he acknowledges that Dominico Báñez, Diego Álvarez, and other Thomist thinkers of the early modern era also argued a theory of divine concurrence that distinguished between primary and secondary causes. But he regards all such argumentation to be a theological “failure” characteristic of “a period where metaphysical subtlety seems to have been at its lowest ebb.” The “metaphysical subtlety” of an era that included such thinkers as Paulus Soncinas, Pedro da Fonseca, Clemens Timpler, Rudolph Goclenius, and Francisco Suárez needs no defense against a few jaundiced comments from Hart; and there are sufficient legitimate expositions of Báñez, Álvarez, and the theory of praemotio physica to deflect Hart’s caricature.3 Nor does it need to be demonstrated that Calvin actually did have a doctrine of providence, given the amount of space and detail that he devoted to the subject in his Institutes of the Christian Religion,4 in the section devoted to providence in his Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God,5 and in his On the Secret Providence of God,6 not to mention the numerous discussions of divine providence in his commentaries and sermons. What Hart actually reports is not the absence, but his dislike of Calvin’s doctrine.
Muller, Richard A.. Understanding the Divine in Early Modern Reformed Theology (pp. 57-58). (Function). Kindle Edition.
As they say, “context is king”.
Did Muller actually just term Calvin’s doctrine of providence as “absolute divine determinism”? That would be far from the truth – and quite far from the assertion by Allen that “Reformed scholarship remains divided over whether Calvin’s view necessarily implies what Muller terms “absolute divine determinism.” Muller is clear that it was David Bentley Hart (a member of an Orthodox church who seems to hold to some form of universalism) who, in what Muller says is a “paradigmatic error of interpretation”, wrote that Calvin “cannot be said to have understood by ‘providence’ anything other than absolute divine determinism.”
Further, Muller says that this is a “caricature” by Hart. And he also said that Hart is just reporting “his dislike of Calvin’s doctrine.”
So rather than Allen being able to assert that Muller “termed” Calvin’s doctrine as “absolute divine determinism”, Allen should rather be asserting with Muller that calling Calvin’s doctrine “absolute divine determinism” is a “caricature” and a “paradigmatic error.”
As I’m working on additional responses to this book, I felt that it was fitting to start here at the foundation, if you will. This may seem like a small detail to point out, but I believe that it is necessary. We see here that the term Allen has chosen to use for the Reformed doctrine of providence (and election, predestination, etc…) was said to be a term that an influential modern Reformed theologian actually uses. But I have demonstrated that this is not actually the case.
Personally, I find the use of “divine determinism” in this discussion to be rather appalling and it appears to me that Dr. Allen is not acting in good faith by (a) using this term or (b) assigning it to Muller as being a term Muller and the Reformed would use. Granting the most charitable option possible, I believe that Dr. Allen’s assignation of this term to Muller may have begun out of a misreading of Muller (at best!) and that if Dr. Allen reads this post, his continued use of this term after having this error being pointed out means that Dr. Allen is intentionally using this phrase to poison the well against Reformed Theology. (The ideal path moving forward for Dr. Allen is that he should admit that Muller did not positively use this term to describe the Reformed position and a correction made to the book.)
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