In one chapter of his book, Thinking about God,[1] Gregory E. Ganssle explains freedom and determinism, and concludes that he favors “libertarian free will.” He argues as follows:
Now, why should you agree with me about the nature of human freedom? Let me give you two reasons. First, it seems strange to hold someone morally responsible for an action if that action is not up to him. If determinism is true, then no action is up to the one who does it. At least no action is up to the one who does it to a high enough degree to make it reasonable to hold the person responsible. Yet we do hold each other morally responsible. The best explanation is that some actions are up to us and we are responsible for them.
Second, libertarian free will makes the most sense of our deliberation. We often find ourselves deliberating between alternatives, and we are convinced that our deliberation has a real effect on the outcome. The decision we come to, upon deliberating, seems to be up to us. If freedom is not of the libertarian kind, then deliberation does not make as much sense. Thus, libertarian freedom is the better concept of freedom, and compatibilist freedom is no freedom at all.[2]
There are numerous errors, but I will first focus on those words that are relevant to our topic, which is intuition.
If we were to debate the issue of human freedom, will Ganssle come at me with “seems strange,” “we are convinced,” and “seems to be”? I can just as readily say it “seems right,” “I am not convinced, and “seems not to be”! He is convinced of the premises that seem to him as true, but I can be just as convinced of the opposite. Once you mix “seems like” as an essential part of your argument, you have left the area of rational argumentation, and you have lost the right to stop your opponent from using the same tactic. To him it always “seems like” that you are wrong.
Someone might say, “If God is absolutely sovereign, then he controls even our decisions, so that we do not have freedom or free will. However, we sense (we are convinced, we feel, we think, it seems like) that we do have freedom or free will; therefore, the doctrine of divine sovereignty must be false.” I sense, it seems to me, and my intuition tells me, that he is an idiot. If he is not an idiot, then he might be right and I might be wrong; therefore he must be an idiot.
If he disagrees with my intuition, then why do I have to agree with his? If he tells me that I do not really sense that he is an idiot, then I can tell him that he does not really sense freedom. If he can claim to know what really goes on in my mind, then I can claim to know what really goes on in his mind.
Ganssle assumes that intuition is universal, that it tells us all the same things, and that he knows what it tells all of us. Is he human, or something more? In any case, he makes his argument on the basis of his impressive knowledge about even the private thoughts of all mankind. He asserts:
- I intuitively affirm a standard of ethics such that “it seems strange to hold someone morally responsible for an action if that action is not up to him.”
- I am “convinced that our deliberation has a real effect on the outcome.”
- The decision that I come to, upon deliberating, “seems [to me] to be” up to me.
However, unless he can prove that he knows the private thoughts of all mankind, if he can claim to know what I intuitively affirm in my mind, then I can also claim to know what he intuitively affirms in his mind. In fact, I deny that my intuition tells me these three items. Rather, “we are convinced” that he is wrong, and that he “seems to be” confused and arbitrary. The whole thing is subjective nonsense.
Arminians sometimes base their crucial premises on intuition alone. Ganssle’s pattern is common – they assume that the premises they need are true just because they seem to be true to them. They say that they are convinced that these premises are true, and often they speak for the rest of humanity by saying that we are all convinced. One of these premises is that we all seem to have free will. Another is that it would seem unjust to hold someone morally accountable who does not have free will. Their standard of truth is not God’s revelation but their own intuition. What “seems” true to them becomes unquestionable, and the basis of which all other considerations must turn. In other words, they regard themselves as the ultimate authority – they regard themselves as God.
However, all the “seems like” could be wrong. Perhaps people think they have free will not because they know something, but because they do not know something.[3] Perhaps they intuitively believe certain things because they are ignorant. Luther says that we think we have free will because we have been deceived by Satan.[4] In any case, the debate cannot be settled by intuition.
Many atheists also argue this way. For example, since they reject revelation, they cannot appeal to it as a foundation for ethics. Then, when they turn to their sensation, those who are less stupid realize that they cannot derive anything from it. So some of them turn to intuition, and claim that by it they know certain ethical principles. However, other than the problems already mentioned (that intuition is non-universal, subjective, fallible, etc.), there is no reason to say that we must obey intuition.
Calvinists and Reformed writers often appeal to intuition to construct their doctrines and their arguments. They do this when they attempt to assert some of the same ideas and premises that the non-Christians and heretics affirm, such as unbiblical concepts of freedom and justice. Since these premises cannot be derived from biblical revelation, and since we can derive nothing from sensation, they take refuge in intuition. Thus they banish themselves to subjectivism and irrelevance.
One example is William G. T. Shedd. Although he is to be commended as less empirically inclined than other theologians, he fails to depend solely on God’s revelation. Appeals to intuition pervade his Dogmatic Theology, and he does this to establish premises that only Arminians should affirm, and that only Arminians need, such as a version of free will and a false basis for moral accountability.
Ganssle mentions several points that are not directly connected with intuition, but that are also problematic. We turn our attention to the following statements, already cited at the beginning:
If determinism is true, then no action is up to the one who does it. At least no action is up to the one who does it to a high enough degree to make it reasonable to hold the person responsible. Yet we do hold each other morally responsible. The best explanation is that some actions are up to us and we are responsible for them.[5]
To consider his points in some detail, we will separately examine each of these statements.
“If determinism is true, then no action is up to the one who does it.”
This is so ambiguous that it is hard to know what to do with it. The crucial expression “up to” is undefined.[6] Depending on what he means, it can refer to anything from a volitional freedom relative to other creatures or a volitional freedom relative to God himself, which is absolute freedom.
The language and context demand the latter interpretation, because the claim that one’s action is “up to” himself is contrasted with “determinism.” The context of the book suggests that the “determinism” here is inclusive of, if not restricted to, divine determinism, or the idea that it is God who determines all things, including all human decisions. So he must mean that if one’s action is “up to” himself, then it is not determined by God.
However, if any action is not determined by God, then Ganssle is no longer talking about the God of the Bible. Refer to some of my other works for an explanation on divine sovereignty.[7] In any case, the expression “up to” remains ambiguous, and the argument cannot succeed if even he does not seem to know what he means.
“At least no action is up to the one who does it to a high enough degree to make it reasonable to hold the person responsible.”
Now things really get strange.
He says that the “up to”-ness must be high enough before it is “reasonable” to hold someone “responsible.” WHY? Even if we could understand his statement, we have no reason to believe it.
But it is not easy to understand the statement. We do not even know what he means by “up to,” and now he claims that there are degrees of “up to”-ness. According to him, an action can be “up to” a person to a greater or lesser degree, but he does not explain how he knows this.
He indicates that the “up to”-ness must reach a certain degree before it is “high enough” to make it “reasonable to hold the person responsible.” Even if we swallow the suggestion that there are degrees of “up to”-ness, how high is “high enough,” and how does he know? How is the degree of “up to”-ness measured?
If the “up to”-ness must be high enough to be “reasonable,” what does he mean by “reasonable”? Does he mean something that is validly deducible from true premises, or does he mean something like “morally acceptable”? If he means something like the latter, then what would he mean by “acceptable”? “Acceptable” to whom? Who sets the standard? How does he know?
By “reasonable,” he is probably appealing again to his intuition, something that he cannot project or support outside of his own mind, and something that he assumes that we all share, but that we in fact do not – my intuition does not agree with him. So again, his intuition takes the place of God and sets the standard of justice for all mankind. In fact, he sets the standard for God himself.
Also, what does he mean by “responsible”? I will not try to guess, and I do not think he knows, either.
Since he contrasts the “up to”-ness of one’s action against “determinism” (so if something is “up to” God, then it is not “up to” us), and since the “up to”-ness can be of a greater or lesser degree, it follows that God’s “up to”-ness is also in degrees (so if something is “up to” us, then it is not “up to” God). And since Ganssle contends that many things are “up to” us, it follows that many things are not “up to” God.
Therefore, God’s “up to”-ness is similar to ours, even if it is greater in degree or more frequent in instances. He might be more powerful than his creatures, so that more things are “up to” him than “up to” us, but it remains that when it comes to “up to”-ness, he differs from us only in degree and not in kind. Thus Ganssle’s deity is only a super-man or like one of the pagan gods. Again, we have lost the God of the Bible.
The Christian faith teaches something different. We are “morally responsible” in the sense that we are morally accountable to God. He will hold us accountable. He will judge us. Our beliefs and actions will have consequences because God will cause these consequences.
It is “reasonable” for God to hold us responsible in the sense that it is both logically valid and morally acceptable for him to do so. It is logically valid because this is a conclusion deducible from his own will and decree, and it is morally acceptable because he is the sole and ultimate moral standard, and he accepts his own decision to hold his creatures responsible. God is Reason, and his thinking sets the standard of what is “reasonable,” not our intuition.
The whole matter is explained without mention of human freedom. It has no place to enter the discussion. If it appears, it has to be arbitrarily introduced by force. Once it is introduced, it is impossible to show its relevance unless the false premise “responsibility presupposes freedom” is also introduced by force and without argument.
“Yet we do hold each other morally responsible.”
To understand this statement, and to see what is so wrong about it, we need read it in the context of the paragraph:
If determinism is true, then no action is up to the one who does it. At least no action is up to the one who does it to a high enough degree to make it reasonable to hold the person responsible. Yet we do hold each other morally responsible. The best explanation is that some actions are up to us and we are responsible for them.
To paraphrase, “If determinism is true, then we are not morally responsible. But we do hold each other morally responsible. Therefore, determinism is false.” Suppose we agree that “we do hold each other morally responsible,” Ganssle does not establish that this is the right thing to do. Just because we do something does not mean that it is right. It is just as easy to say, “Since determinism is true, we should not hold each other responsible,” or “Since determinism is true and we hold each other responsible, determinism is consistent with responsibility.”
The argument is supposed to show that determinism is false, and not merely to make sense of holding each other responsible. It is not only to explain something that we do, but that might be either right or wrong. Rather, the argument intends to refute determinism, and to do that, it depends on the premise “we do hold each other morally responsible,” and on the assumption that this is the right thing to do so that this premise should be held constant.
As it stands, all this argument does is to explain why Ganssle wishes that determinism is false. He wants determinism to be false because he wants to explain why we hold each other responsible. According to him, in order to justify what we do (without showing that what we do is right or that freedom is the necessary basis for what we do), we must reject determinism (without showing that determinism is false or that it contradicts what we do). Thus what he intends as a rational defense of “libertarian free will” turns out to be incomprehensible chaos.
The Christian faith teaches something different. God has revealed his moral laws to us, and he has declared that he will hold us accountable according to these laws. He has also established human relationships and institutions by which we hold each other accountable in a relative and temporal way, to maintain a level of peace, order, and justice in human society, until he renders absolute and perfect accountability when he judges humanity. Rather than enthroning our intuition or common practice as the ultimate standard by which all other ideas are judged, the Christian faith acknowledges God as the foundation for moral responsibility.
“The best explanation is that some actions are up to us and we are responsible for them.”
Again, the argument amounts to saying, “If determinism is true, then we are not morally responsible. But we do hold each other morally responsible. Therefore, determinism is false.” The conclusion is not a necessary inference from the premises. We can use the same premises and come to a different conclusion: “If determinism is true, then we are not morally responsible. But we do hold each other morally responsible. Therefore, we are wrong in holding each other morally responsible.” Both are fallacious, since the conclusions are not derived from the premises by necessary inference. Moreover, while Ganssle assumes the first premise, he offers no justification for it, and we have shown that it is false.
Ganssle’s first paragraph is a complete failure, but he continues:
Second, libertarian free will makes the most sense of our deliberation. We often find ourselves deliberating between alternatives, and we are convinced that our deliberation has a real effect on the outcome. The decision we come to, upon deliberating, seems to be up to us. If freedom is not of the libertarian kind, then deliberation does not make as much sense. Thus, libertarian freedom is the better concept of freedom, and compatibilist freedom is no freedom at all.[8]
Again, he first assumes that determinism is inconsistent with something that we do without showing that the two are in fact inconsistent, and then he tries to make sense of what we do without justifying what we do in the first place. So the criticisms against the first paragraph also apply to this second one.
He says, “We are convinced that our deliberation has a real effect on the outcome.” Who is he to speak for all of us? In fact, I am not convinced of this statement at all. And even if we are all convinced of this statement, this would not make it true. The premise is assumed by force, and founded on an intuition that is claimed to be common, also by force and without proof. Then, it is unclear what he means by a “real effect.” What does it mean for an effect to be “real” as opposed to not real? The whole statement is unintelligible.
Then, he says, “The decision we come to, upon deliberating, seems to be up to us.” He rests the premise on intuition alone. It is an intuition that he does not prove to be correct or to be common to everyone.
His conclusion is that, “If freedom is not of the libertarian kind, then deliberation does not make as much sense.” Well, then, so much the worse for deliberation! He intends to establish libertarian free will, and to do this he claims that only libertarian free will can make sense of deliberation. The argument fails because, first, he fails to establish that only libertarian free will can make sense of deliberation; second, he fails to establish that we should make sense of deliberation; and third, he fails to establish that deliberation makes sense in the first place.
He claims that “libertarian freedom is the better concept of freedom,” but at this point it is irrelevant, because he fails to establish libertarian freedom, or for that matter, any kind of freedom.
Nevertheless, this is not a complete failure, because he realizes that “compatibilist freedom is no freedom at all.” This insight is clear to many people, but not to the compatibilists. As he explains earlier in the chapter, by “compatibilist freedom” he means “determined but free.”[9] He states that this is a popular concept of freedom, but one that he rejects. Here he adds that it is “no freedom at all.”
Since the topic is determinism relative to God, then any freedom is only relevant if it is a freedom from God. If an action is in fact determined by God, then the person who performs the action is in no sense free from God. Thus divine determinism and human freedom are mutually exclusive. Those who assert that the two are compatible invariably define determinism in a way that God does not truly determine everything and define freedom as something that is not in fact a freedom from God. Ganssle is correct – compatibilist freedom is not freedom at all. It is a trick that people invented because they wished to have it both ways, but it is impossible to affirm both divine determinism and human freedom.
Although Calvinists and Reformed Christians are proud of their stance on divine sovereignty to the point of despising other human religious traditions, their doctrine almost always falls far short of absolute divine determinism – they do not really believe that God is completely sovereign. They also falsely assume that man must have some kind of freedom in order to be held accountable. The difference is that they espouse a kind of freedom that is not freedom at all, but it is a trick.
Freedom is almost always falsely defined, even undefined. We must at least answer the question, “Free from what?” Since we are referring to divine determinism, the “determiner” is God. So the only relevant thing to be free from is God, and whether we are free from any other thing is irrelevant. Thus the question becomes, “Is man free from God in any sense?” Once you declare that man is free from God in some sense, you have lost the God of the Bible.
The Christian faith teaches something different. Absolute divine determinism is true; therefore, man has no freedom relative to God – he is not free from God in any sense. However, he is still morally responsible and accountable because God holds him responsible and accountable. There is no logical reason to introduce the issue of freedom. The premise, “responsibility presupposes freedom,” is arbitrary, unbiblical, and impossible to prove. Rather, Scripture teaches that responsibility presupposes divine judgment, and divine judgment presupposes God’s decision to make this judgment. Therefore, human responsibility presupposes divine sovereignty, not human freedom. We are morally responsible because God is sovereign and we are not free.
The question then becomes one of justice, for to many people it seems unjust to hold someone accountable who is not free. However, this is just the same question rephrased. The issue of justice appears relevant only because one has brought freedom into the discussion by force. The answer is that this is just because it is what God has decided, and he is the sole and ultimate standard of justice; therefore, this is just by definition. People might not like this because it contradicts their intuition of freedom, responsibility, and justice; however, theirs is a sinful intuition. They appeal to their intuition, even making it the basis on which all other considerations must turn, but they have ignored the noetic effects of sin.
Scripture teaches that every person has an innate knowledge of God in the sense that he knows about God, even some of his attributes and commands, by instinct, or by intuition, apart from observation and experience.[10] This knowledge resides in man’s mind because God has directly imparted it to him as a creature made in the divine image. Biblical apologists sometimes mention this; however, this is different from appealing to intuition as a basis for argument.
Our innate knowledge of God is not established by intuition itself, but by revelation. We do not say, “We have an intuitive knowledge of God; therefore, we indeed have this knowledge, and this knowledge is true.” Instead, we say, “God’s revelation tells me that I have an intuitive knowledge of God; therefore, I indeed have an intuitive knowledge of God.” And we say, “God’s revelation tells me that my intuitive knowledge of God is true; therefore, my intuitive knowledge of God is true.”
We also add, “God’s revelation tells me that our intuitive knowledge of God has been suppressed and distorted by sin; therefore, although it is true that I have an intuitive knowledge of God, and although this intuitive knowledge of God is true, this intuition cannot function as a source of my theology or as justification for my premises in reasoning, because I cannot accurately perceive and represent the information contained in this intuition. Rather, I need God’s revelation to tell me what this intuitive knowledge contains and what to do with it.”
When we refer to our intuitive knowledge of God, we are talking about a claim made by revelation about intuition. It is not a claim made by intuition about intuition, and not a claim made by intuition about revelation. We do not try to prove God’s revelation by our intuition; rather, we are stating what God’s revelation tells us that we know by intuition. This knowledge has been suppressed and distorted by sin, but we know even this only by revelation. Therefore, when we talk about intuition and our intuitive knowledge of God, we do this on a different basis than the one who have been refuting, and for a different purpose.
When we refer to what we know by intuition, we do not make a direct appeal to intuition, but we appeal to what God tells us that we know by intuition. In the context of theology and apologetics, we mention this as one of the reasons that sinners cannot excuse themselves. They know God by instinct, but they refuse to acknowledge him or worship him, to believe the gospel and to obey his commandments. We do not begin by saying that everyone knows God by intuition, so that there is no excuse for unbelief; rather, we begin by revelation, and then on the basis of revelation say that everyone knows God by intuition, and therefore there is no excuse for unbelief.
[1] Gregory E. Ganssle, Thinking About God (InterVarsity Press, 2004).
[2] Ibid., p. 136-137, emphasis added.
[3] See Gordon Clark, Predestination.
[4] See Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will.
[5] Ganssle, p. 137.
[6] He tries to illustrate (not define) it on page 135, but fails to clarify it. On the same page, he admits, “Now, up-to-me-ness is not a very precise concept.”
[7] See Systematic Theology, Ultimate Questions, and Commentary on Ephesians.
[8] Ganssle, p. 137.
[9] Ibid., p. 131.
[10] See Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology, Ultimate Questions, and Presuppositional Confrontations.