Concerning Determinism: Is it actually possible that more than what happens can happen?

[Josheb]

makesends said:
Whatever God has not caused directly is still caused, though indirectly, by God, and usually by many many lines of causation.

That is not a point in dispute. You have to move on past this because it is not a point in dispute. You have to move on past this because it is not the only explanation and you have limited all of your thinking and all of your position to this one premise. You have to move past this because you have also posted (in agreement) that humans are also causal agents. Yes, their existence as causal agents is predicated upon their being an effect of the Uncaused Cause's first cause, but that does not preclude their created ontology as causal creatures. You have to move past this premise because the Uncaused Cause's first cause is not His only cause, which means not all effects are due to the first cause. Not all subsequent causes and their effects are caused by His first cause. You have to move past this because it contradicts your statement only one outcome is possible - it precludes the premise of multiple influences (think it through).

makesends said:
MOST effects are the result of not only long lines of causation, but multiple lines of causation.

Not if only one outcome is exists. Say God causes X to happen with Person A, and God causes Y to happen with Person B and then Person A and Person B meet Person C. The first problem YOU need to address and resolve is the fact two different outcomes happened with two different people because you say only one outcome is possible = the one that happened. Your natural response will be to protest and say A and B had different influences but that's a cop out because you've said there is only one necessary outcome (the one that happened). If you trace backwards all their influences YOU are still bound by YOUR "rule," your belief only one outcome is possible. As you work your way backward you are going to come to the inescapable position that one cause caused only one outcome. Otherwise, you are going to have to depart from the single-cause-single-outcome position.

Conversely, if God's first cause caused multiple lines of causation, then there is more than one outcome to any one cause; many causes with many outcomes and one of them is limited causal agency in humans. Since God, the Uncaused First Cause, did not cause just one cause, but He constantly enters His creation to add first cause, to add multiple first causes not all cause-and-effects can be traced back to the first cause of Genesis 1:1, and since humans, although they themselves are caused by the Uncaused Cause's first cause, also add cause and effect to creation.

And ALL of it conspires to conclude in a single outcome that was decided before the Uncaused Cause's first cause.

I don't understand how not.

I know.

Let's consider the will, the desires, the inclinations of the heart. Many things bring that about. And so we choose accordingly, do we not? We always choose between what we consider the options. We even speak that way, but it makes no difference as to the facts —we always choose what God decreed.

All of that has all already been covered and I do not understand how and why it is you did not understand it the first time and feel the need to repeat already posted content.

Sometimes what humans choose is the antithesis of the influences. We have the ability to do the exact opposite of what causes and influences would otherwise dictate. There is also another factor that hasn't yet been broached: competing influences. A causes B and C causes D. If A and C come to bear on a given human's moment of choice and action, then there is a multitude of options, not just one (as you have asserted). That person can choose A, B, some near-infinite mixture of A-and-B, or neither. It turns out that no matter how seemingly deterministic the influence, the causal influences humans have the ability to act spontaneously. Yes, it is still a situation where the act might not have occurred otherwise, but the act is one of antithesis, not thesis. As far as I can tell from scripture, the angels once held this capacity on the obedient side of sin but those who do not keep their proper abode no longer possess that attribute while humans - even in the sinful state - still retain some modicum of liberty in this regard. Our ability to say "No," to any one sin but inability to deny all sin is evidence of that condition. Although conditions have changed, this unrealized dialectic goes all the way back to Eden. Eve saw the forbidden fruits was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise, but she also knew it was forbidden and she knew she'd been given both the command and the authority, as well as the power to both say "No," and rule over the serpent. Three different competing sets of influences.

 

[Josheb]

I disagree

I disagree.

No, you do not.

If there are no decisions to be made then volitional agency does not exist and you have contradicted many of your posts asserting both human will and humans as causal agents. This has to be sorted out and reconciled if your position is to be both scripturally and logically consistent. If there is only one influence than, again, you have contradicted all your own posts in which you have asserted multiple influences with multiple effects that then become more multiple influences and more effects and more causes. Can't be had both ways. Here too this has to be sorted out and reconciled if your position is to have scriptural and logical integrity.

And let's be clear and return to a context that hasn't been mentioned in a while: We are discussing Calvinism! We're not discussing Arminianism, Pelagianism, Floberzergandianism, or any other ~ism. This is important because if and when any of us are positing or asserting anything outside the Calvinist theology we're no longer discussing Calvinism.

Within Calvinist theology both determinism and real human volitional agency exist at the same time.

makesends said:
Perhaps he's sick because of all the causes that engineered Covid 19. Perhaps his mother called him an idiot. Perhaps a beautiful woman smiled at him. Perhaps he read some verse. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. I don't think anyone can demonstrate that anyone's choices are uninfluenced, and that, from many different directions.

God, Jesus, Durkheim, Pavlov, Wolpe, Russell and a plethora of others throughout human history have demonstrably proved human behavior are influenced. They've also demonstrably proved people kick against the goads quite often. One of us is demonstrating this right now because one of us is correct anf the other incorrect and while it is true many influences are bearing down on each of us the one holding the incorrect view has made choices and is acting in antithesis to the truth, the thesis, of those influences .

This seems only circular to me.

LOL! You do understand I was using your words, yes? If I use yor words and you now see that seems circular, then maybe there's hope for you .

I consider you more intelligent than myself.

Thank you but I would prefer to keep the posts about the posts and not the posters. While edification is always valued and appreciated it runs the same risk as ad hominem and usually begs the question "If I'm thought to be so intelligent then why aren't you accepting what I say?" and it usually comes followed with rancor and accusation. I'm familiar with what many think. So, let's keep the posts about the posts.

Maybe you can explain how this is so, and the other two claims above it, without posting a presumption as the basis for your reasoning.

I have. We've all wrestled with the overlap between determinism and volitional agency, and we can see in the thread the matter is still being meted out in the minds of everyone here. Your exchanges, along with my (coincidental? ) recent readings on divine foreknowledge have prompted me to think more about this. Those are my influences. It is my opinion that much ot the problem pertaining to the failure to reconcile the two is the tendency to polarize the discussion and emphasize one end over the other when the solution lies in overlap and diversity. For example, I myself have often argued the single-cause-matrix-of-effect position and done so vigorously. Past posts may even have influenced your thinking on this and for that I have some regret. Reading my Bible, I have been "struck" with the fact God frequently adds causation and He adds causation that is completely unrelated causally to His first and cause(s) and other preceding causes. The singular-cause position is faulty. I noticed one of the other posters here attempted to explain how my views differ from Open Theism and I appreciate that because I've just been reading Greg Boyd and his reasoning is not rational. I do not fathom how a man so well educated and so intelligent, and so practiced can make some of the errors he makes, BUT I have also noticed how locked into a single mindset are his critics. It makes for a weird form of incestuous thesis and antithesis.

We've covered most of the basics and some of the more complex matters, so I think the best option is to re-read the posts and keep re-reading them until they're understood because once the posts are understood the overall argument will make sense.

makesends said:
And meticulous causation knows exactly what choice he will make as a result of those influences, both those turned away from and those accepted, to include one's own inclinations —all caused.

This is sort of correct. Remember: When we speak of "meticulous causation" we're talking about God and as such at least three matters are necessarily important to know and understand. The first point is that the "will" has to be changed to "has". From God's position outside of time and space God knows what chose has been made, not what choice will be made. For us that choice is a future event but for Him it is a fact or eternity. For Him all our past, present, and future is an eternally known now. The second point is that knowledge is not always causal. Yes, if God knows what "will" occur" then nothing but that which He knows can or will happen, but that does not make His knowledge causal. The third point is the meticulous causation contradicts the singular-first-cause position in its entirety. Both cannot be simultaneously true and correct. If the Uncaused Cause's first cause determined all other cause-and-effects such that only one outcome is possible then He has absolutely no need whatsoever to be meticulous. There are a couple of other, lesser, concerns but those three show what many post about meticulous causation is irrational, a function of "honest" mistakes at best but it runs the risk of lies at its worst.

Wait a minute. At the face, at least, meticulous causation only means that each cause (and implied, effect) was meticulously caused — i.e. not by accident or by chance, but purposed, intended. If you mean something else by it, I didn't know. Maybe we are arguing apples and oranges.

Those words are fairly accurate but because they are incomplete, they are not wholly accurate. The thing left out is the will of God. Meticulous agency is not the Blind Watchmaker. It is not sterile, meaningless events, influences, or causes that have effect by the deliberate willful intent of God violating human will.

And that is not Calvinism.

This is why strict or meticulous determinism is at the outlier end of Calvinism/monergism (just as strict autonomy is at the far end of Arminianism/synergism). It does not represent the more orthodox "middle" of the theology.

So, the word "only" needs to be removed and the specific and deliberate exclusive singular will of God added. So too do multiple influences need to be removed. Even if God uses multiple "influences" the reality is that He is the sole, single, solitary cause and that cause is deterministic. That means only one outcome occurs and it is NOT because the thing that happened proves it (the post hoc fallacy explanation) but that the cause did not cause anything but His one intended effect. While we might think - from inside creation - that Parson A and Person B influence Person C the hidden truth is that God, Person Alpha and Omega, is the sole, single, solitary cause with one sole, single, solitary effect. Perceptions of diversity are a delusion.

But if by the meaning of meticulous causation, we both mean God exhaustively intended and caused absolutely all things to come to be, then it is not implied, though you seem to think so, that no other causes are used as means. You have asserted that it is so, but it remains to be proven.

Word mean what words mean. The word "meticulous" means, "showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise" and the phrase "meticulous causation" means controlling for variables (so they do not occur). Theologically, the phrase means God continuously exerts His control (sometimes worded as providence, or protection, or some other obfuscation) in a monistic manner (precluding any diversity in outcome and any duality between God's will/mind and creation or the word. At least that is the classic definition, the one we'd find in Augustina Aquinas, Calvinism, and the monergistic end of the theological spectrum. The Molinists like to play around with monism to assert a middle ground between determinism and openness but that is not meticulous determinism.

More germanely, if you are not a subscriber to meticulous causation or determinism then that's a good thing but it means you'll have to discard some of the single-cause and single outcome thinking wherever they necessitate meticulousness.

 

[makesends]

makesends said:
I disagree

No, you do not.

If there are no decisions to be made

Who said there are no decisions to be made? We are constantly making decisions.

If there are no decisions to be made then volitional agency does not exist and you have contradicted many of your posts asserting both human will and humans as causal agents. This has to be sorted out and reconciled if your position is to be both scripturally and logically consistent. If there is only one influence than, again, you have contradicted all your own posts in which you have asserted multiple influences with multiple effects that then become more multiple influences and more effects and more causes. Can't be had both ways. Here too this has to be sorted out and reconciled if your position is to have scriptural and logical integrity.

HOW do you come up with the notion that I think there is only one influence? The thesis of all logical sequences beginning with First Cause does not say, nor even imply that. I don't contradict my own posts.

And let's be clear and return to a context that hasn't been mentioned in a while: We are discussing Calvinism! We're not discussing Arminianism, Pelagianism, Floberzergandianism, or any other ~ism. This is important because if and when any of us are positing or asserting anything outside the Calvinist theology we're no longer discussing Calvinism.

Within Calvinist theology both determinism and real human volitional agency exist at the same time.

Then why are we arguing? —Because you seem to think that real human volitional agency IS libertarian free will, and I think that not only makes no sense, but is against Scripture, and because I want to know if that position is representative of Calvinism.

 

[makesends]

makesends said:
Whatever God has not caused directly is still caused, though indirectly, by God, and usually by many many lines of causation.

That is not a point in dispute. You have to move on past this because it is not a point in dispute. You have to move on past this because it is not the only explanation and you have limited all of your thinking and all of your position to this one premise. You have to move past this because you have also posted (in agreement) that humans are also causal agents. Yes, their existence as causal agents is predicated upon their being an effect of the Uncaused Cause's first cause, but that does not preclude their created ontology as causal creatures. You have to move past this premise because the Uncaused Cause's first cause is not His only cause, which means not all effects are due to the first cause. Not all subsequent causes and their effects are caused by His first cause. You have to move past this because it contradicts your statement only one outcome is possible - it precludes the premise of multiple influences (think it through).

Here, and below, I keep seeing you misunderstanding me. First Cause IS the Uncaused Causer = God Himself. He does not cause a first cause from which all else descends causally. He IS that first cause. Maybe I need to capitalize first cause every time.

Not if only one outcome is exists.

Again, I don't say only one outcome exists, period. That flies in the face of experience. When I say that only one outcome happens, I am qualifying that by context. In any one decision, as is empirically affirmed, only one outcome of that decision happens, and that itself then causes further effects. I also do not mean to imply that the decision does not have many unintended (by the human agent) consequences, but that the decision itself is singular. This does not suggest that First Cause Himself has not also caused that decision to be made precisely as it was decided.

Not if only one outcome is exists.

Say God causes X to happen with Person A, and God causes Y to happen with Person B and then Person A and Person B meet Person C. The first problem YOU need to address and resolve is the fact two different outcomes happened with two different people because you say only one outcome is possible = the one that happened. Your natural response will be to protest and say A and B had different influences but that's a cop out because you've said there is only one necessary outcome (the one that happened). If you trace backwards all their influences YOU are still bound by YOUR "rule," your belief only one outcome is possible. As you work your way backward you are going to come to the inescapable position that one cause caused only one outcome. Otherwise, you are going to have to depart from the single-cause-single-outcome position.

You are going a long way into unnecessary territory. "Only one outcome is possible" is not denied by multiple results of that one decision. Maybe I'd better drop the logistical notion, "outcome", and just call it "decision".

Conversely, if God's first cause caused multiple lines of causation, then there is more than one outcome to any one cause; many causes with many outcomes and one of them is limited causal agency in humans. Since God, the Uncaused First Cause, did not cause just one cause, but He constantly enters His creation to add first cause, to add multiple first causes not all cause-and-effects can be traced back to the first cause of Genesis 1:1, and since humans, although they themselves are caused by the Uncaused Cause's first cause, also add cause and effect to creation.

I'm not denying any of that, unless by 'limited causal agency' you mean 'libertarian free will'. Well, that, and the structural addition of "God adding first cause" along the way, should probably be said, "God introducing a new line of causation", to avoid confusion. I have not meant to say, nor to imply, that all lines of causation can be traced back to the First Cause (God Himself) of Gen 1:1. I have no quarrel with miracle, nor with his "upholding" of creation.

And ALL of it conspires to conclude in a single outcome that was decided before the Uncaused Cause's first cause.

Yes, that single outcome being the end result: a wide open "explosion of fact" (I say for lack of an immediately available better way to put it) — The Bride and everything else that comes with "Heaven".

Sometimes what humans choose is the antithesis of the influences. We have the ability to do the exact opposite of what causes and influences would otherwise dictate. There is also another factor that hasn't yet been broached: competing influences. A causes B and C causes D. If A and C come to bear on a given human's moment of choice and action, then there is a multitude of options, not just one (as you have asserted). That person can choose A, B, some near-infinite mixture of A-and-B, or neither. It turns out that no matter how seemingly deterministic the influence, the causal influences humans have the ability to act spontaneously. Yes, it is still a situation where the act might not have occurred otherwise, but the act is one of antithesis, not thesis. As far as I can tell from scripture, the angels once held this capacity on the obedient side of sin but those who do not keep their proper abode no longer possess that attribute while humans - even in the sinful state - still retain some modicum of liberty in this regard. Our ability to say "No," to any one sin but inability to deny all sin is evidence of that condition. Although conditions have changed, this unrealized dialectic goes all the way back to Eden. Eve saw the forbidden fruits was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise, but she also knew it was forbidden and she knew she'd been given both the command and the authority, as well as the power to both say "No," and rule over the serpent. Three different competing sets of influences.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I think all influences are accepted or rule over the agent deciding. In fact, they are some of them influences by the very fact that the agent chooses to act contrary to their more apparent influence! They are influential by both thesis and antithesis. I don't understand why you say that above; to me, the whole paragraph was superfluous. I don't mean that there aren't a multitude of options. But there is only ever one choice. If my way to say that is to say that there is only ever only one option, I only mean it by way of saying that in the end of analysis, only even one option was actually possible.

If more than one option is ACTUALLY POSSIBLE to be chosen, I have yet to see how. If there are two mutually exclusive options open to us from which to choose, only one is possible to be the one chosen.

Admittedly, I do see this rather mechanistically, as opposed to the Pelagian view of a "willed moral agent", who is apparently not subject to any cause, or at least, not many. To me, we are at present nowhere near the free agents that we will be in Heaven, when our every thought is full of Christ. But we consider ourselves self-determining anyway. We are not, at present, so very much higher than animals, after all, compared to God.

 

[Josheb]

makesends said:
I disagree

Who said there are no decisions to be made? We are constantly making decisions.

HOW do you come up with the notion that I think there is only one influence?

Have you not repeatedly argued all effects, all causes, all influences can be traced back to a single cause-and-effect? Do I need to quote those posts?

The very next post, in fact, states...

 

[Josheb]

makesends said:
Whatever God has not caused directly is still caused, though indirectly, by God, and usually by many many lines of causation.

Here, and below, I keep seeing you misunderstanding me. First Cause IS the Uncaused Causer = God Himself. He does not cause a first cause from which all else descends causally. He IS that first cause.

Sophistry.

Maybe I need to capitalize first cause every time.

No, what you need to do is 1) reason through your own position self-identifying its flaws and 2) better articulate your position so contradictions like The First Cause not causing a first cause does not occur because capitalization won't change that contradiction.

The First Cause existed before any creative cause existed and the subject, we are discussing is the determinism of causation. This conversation would not exist had The First Cause not caused a first cause!

He does not cause a first cause from which all else descends causally.

Is any thought being put into these posts?

If The First Cause (God, the Creator) did not cause the first cause then what did? Spontaneous creation absent a causal origin? Whatever the first cause, how then did not all other causes result from it? I've argued multiple (parallel) causes but there would be no multiple causes had there not been a first cause somewhere by someone becuase there'd be no creation in which to cause other causes!

Again, I don't say only one outcome exists, period.

Post #49 says otherwise.

Was it possible that history could have turned out differently (thus affecting all future events)? No, in this sense there was no possibility of Cain not killing his brother. The causative effect of Cain's internal and external circumstances produced his desire and his desire produced the will, then the will produced the murderous act.

The causative effect of Cain's circumstances was caused directly and indirectly by The First Cause and there is no other possibility. That is what you have been arguing.

Post #84 states,

There is something I so often want to say, but don't know how. I wish I could find succinct statements of it and copy them down somewhere. They run in several lines, here overlapping somewhat, since (I think) they are really all that one thing I don't know how to say:

1) That causation from a single beginning 'first cause' (God himself) logically implies that ALL subsequent causes and effects are caused, to include every principle and reality down to the most minute particle of matter and energy. The law of causation is comprehensively pervasive. (And for a quick answer to the protest that God's existence violates the law of causation: No, it doesn't. God is not an effect. The law of causation reads: All effects have a cause.") "Every effect must have a cause, for an effect, by definition, is some-thing that is caused. Thus, for anything to exist, an uncaused some-thing—or someone—must exist." https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/first-and-primary-cause.

If the bold-faced text is correct, then God causes sin (and no other possibility exists).

Post #97 states,

Whatever God has not caused directly is still caused, though indirectly, by God, and usually by many many lines of causation.

All effects are cause by God, whether direct or indirect. There are no multiple lines of causation (because each effect of the one cause is strictly, solely, and exclusively determinative. No other possibility exists.

your own posts contain contradictions.

God says "X" to two people. Are both people going to have the exact same response (effect)? If no other possibility exists but the one that happened, then two different things happening demonstrates two different possibilities from X existed. The argument saying, "But multiple influences over time have made them two different people so there will be different outcomes from the same cause," can be traced all the way back to when those two people were (nearly) identical - to when both were good, unashamed, and sinless - and even before then. It was all caused, directly or indirectly by one cause (God), and not many.

He does not cause a first cause from which all else descends causally.

When you sort this out, I'll consider returning to the conversation. Until then there is no reasoning through this nonsensical pile of contradictions and begged questions.