Vincent Cheung .com » Blog Archive » Determinism vs. Pantheism

Determinism vs. Pantheism

Posted by Vincent Cheung on August 28, 2005

Below is a portion of the article "Determinism vs. Fatalism" that I revised for the book, The Author of Sin. In that article, I answer the charge that my consistent and absolute view of divine sovereignty is in fact fatalism. I show that those who use this objection have no idea what fatalism means.

Then, some people also assert that a view of divine sovereignty in which God actively and exhaustively controls everything amounts to pantheism. For example, R. L. Dabney and A. A. Hodge raised this objection against Jonathan Edwards. Since my view of divine sovereignty and providence is even stronger than that of Edwards, the same objection has been leveled against me. I have answered it in the original version of "Determinism vs. Fatalism," but I have revised and extended my response.

I am posting this here because many of you have already read the original article, and thus might not read the revised version published in the book. As for you new readers, please take time to read those articles that you have missed (see the "recommended" section below) — they are important. Or, better yet, download and read The Author of Sin.

Here it is:

While I am at it, there are those who charge that my determinism and occasionalism amount to pantheism.²² But this is also stupid and ignorant. If pantheism affirms that "all is God," then it means that when God acts on any object, he is always acting only on himself. But this is far from what I affirm. Rather, I affirm that God has created spiritual and material entities that are other than himself, but that he nevertheless completely sustains and controls. To say that God completely controls X is very different from saying that God is X.

In fact, for my opponents to charge me with pantheism because I affirm God's direct and total control over all things implies that they believe, under theism, God cannot have direct and total control over anything that is not himself.²³ But then, since the created universe is not God, by implication they must affirm that God has no direct and total control over anything in the created universe.

That is, by their accusation against me, they imply that God is identified with anything over which he has direct and total control. Then, since they deny my teaching that God has direct and total control over all things, and since they at the same time deny that God is identified with the universe, it follows that they believe God has no direct and total control over anything in the universe.²⁴ And if this is what they believe, then they are not even Christians.

This is the implication of what they believe from their accusation against me. Of course, I am not actually accusing them of believing this, but it is the logical implication, and the charitable conclusion is that they are at least inconsistent.

In any case, as with the charge of fatalism, these people have no idea what pantheism means, and to accuse me of explicitly or implicitly teaching pantheism is nothing but slander.

²² See A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology

²³ Otherwise, they would not charge me with teaching pantheism when I affirm that God directly and totally controls all things.

²⁴ With Scripture, I say that the potter has direct and total control over the clay, but they say that this is pantheism. This implies that they believe the potter can have direct and total control over the clay only if the potter is the clay, and if the potter is not the clay, then the potter does not have direct and total control over the clay. Since it is indeed true that the potter (God) is not the clay (creation and creatures), it follows that they believe that God has no direct and total control over creation and creatures.

In other words, the objection betrays the assumption that God is (identified with) whatever he completely controls. And because Vincent Cheung teaches that God completely controls everything, including all human thoughts and decisions, and including all corporeal and incorporeal objects and the relationships and interactions between them (so that one moving object has no inherent power to move another object when the former strikes the latter, but that it is God who actively and directly controls them both, and that a "secondary cause" can at best be a relative term that cannot attribute any inherent causative power to any created object, etc.), then Vincent Cheung must be teaching pantheism.

Now, after pointing out the unjustified assumption (that God is whatever he completely controls), and after pointing out that I reject this assumption, it remains that this is their assumption, on the basis of which they formed their accusation against me. It is at this point that the objection backfires. Because their assumption is that God is identified with whatever he completely controls, this means that if they believe that God completely controls anything at all, then God must be identified with that object, and this makes them at least modified or partial pantheists. Holding constant their assumption, the only logical alternative is for them to deny that God completely controls anything in his creation, but then they are not even theists anymore.

Therefore, logically speaking, those who use this objection affirm either partial pantheism or finite godism, neither of which allows them to consistently call themselves Christians. On the other hand, I affirm that God completely controls everything about everything that is anything, and that this does not imply that he is identified with those things that he controls; rather, his creation is something other than himself, but it is nevertheless something that he completely controls.

RECOMMENDED

— Blog —

Almost all of the following have been revised and published in Vincent Cheung, The Author of Sin.

The Author of Sin

The Author of Confusion

Why God Created Evil

Compatibilist Freedom

Augustine and Compatibilism

"Soft" Determinism

Determinism vs. Fatalism

Creatures Cannot Initiate Motion

Preservation and Providence