Reformed Theology Roundtable: Does the Author Analogy Succeed?

Last week, while multitudes of theology nerds were still digesting the Molinism vs Calvinism debate between William Lane Craig and James White, our friends at the Complete Sinner’s Guide brought us a fascinating deep-dive on the intricacies of Reformed Theology. Co-hosts Tyler Fowler and Joshua Davidson were joined by frequent guest Joshua Sherman and, to represent the Reformed position, Chris Date, Andrew Elliott, and Jeremiah Short. The purpose of this panel discussion was to clearly articulate the relationship between the Reformed/Calvinistic concepts of God’s eternal decree and man’s free will, as described by the philosophy of compatibilism. While all three affirm God’s meticulous determination of all history, each reject hard determinism and the idea that God is the author of sin. This was a central sticking point in the discussion, especially as Date proposed that their position is best compared to the relationship between an author and his story. I would like to do my best here to represent this view, and to show how I believe this analogy fails to remove God as the author of sin in the Calvinistic system. (Much of the discussion was led by Date, with Davidson doing most of the pressing for clarity. For this reason, I will primarily be addressing their interactions.)

Compatibilism Defined

The heart of the discussion begins about 15 minutes in as Date gives a succinct definition: “Compatibilism… is just the idea that… determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. The whole point of compatibilism is to affirm determinism.” Determinism, from a theological standpoint, is the idea that everything which happens, to the most minute detail, is by God’s determined will. This, of course, raises the question of how we factor in the idea that humans have free will. Date explains that “they have a sufficient degree of freedom as to be held morally responsible.” Elliott adds, “God determines all things, but He does it in such a manner that you will freely choose to do so.” 

This determination is made effective by God’s decree prior to creation. Biblical evidence is cited from Genesis 50:20 and Acts 4:27-28, which show God’s will being accomplished through the sinful acts of men. However, Molinists equally appeal to such passages for support. Like Calvinists, they affirm God’s decree of all things prior to creation. The key difference is that in Molinism, God’s decree is based in part on His foreknowledge of what human beings would do (allowing for libertarian free will), as opposed to His foreknowledge simply being what He has determined them to do in compatibilistic Calvinism.

The Author Analogy

From here, Date goes on to give his author analogy, as he explains how God’s decree plays out in space-time events in a comparable way to those of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” The world imagined by Tolkien is actualized within those stories, but the characters experience them in their own sense of time with their own sense of agency. Date gives a good summary of his mission in this discussion when he says: “I want to encourage my fellow Calvinists to think of… the relationship between God and time as something analogous to the relationship between an author and a story, because I think that non-Calvinists are right to object if there is a meaningful sense in which God is causing people to sin.” He hopes to solidify the discussion around this analogy, as opposed to robot or puppet analogies (which he rejects), adding, “Let the battle happen on that ground.”

What then is the advantage of the author analogy? For Date, the difference is what he calls a “transcendence gap.” In other words, because God exists in the eternal realm and we live out His decree in space-time by our own thoughts and actions, God is not responsible for what we do. This transcendence gap is, in his words, “critical for maintaining moral culpability for humans.” The blame for sin then resides in humans, even though God has determined prior to our existence that we would sin. Since Date has admitted that non-Calvinists have good reason to object to the idea that God causes people to sin, the point of debate becomes clear. Does the eternal decree “cause” people to sin? If it does, compatibilism fails to defend the holiness of God. All three Reformed participants agree that the decree does not equate to “cause.” And this is where I am left genuinely perplexed.

Competing Views of Freedom

Representing the non-Calvinists in the audience, Davidson challenges this notion: “I think the disconnect is that if there is a first cause, and it is not the individual agent, that the freedom is then compromised.” To this Short responds, “You are presupposing incompatibilism.” This phrase will be repeated multiple times throughout the remainder of the discussion, as the Reformed participants take the position that the libertarian concept of free will makes false assumptions about freedom that the compatibilist successfully avoids. 

Date explains: “I come to the issue of freedom, and I try to make no assumptions about what that requires. And one of the assumptions I refuse to make is that in order for an agent’s choice to be free, their choice has to ultimately, full stop, originate with them.” At one point, Davidson seeks clarification: “It just needs to SEEM as though there could be the alternate possibility.” Date gladly affirms: “That’s great! I like that!” 

This exchange reveals that in compatibilism, the choice between competing options is an illusion. You may think you are making the choice, but it has been chosen for you. Yet you take responsibility for that choice because you are the one who performs it, believing you are making it. Date summarizes: “Their will is influenced by all sorts of factors including their genetics, their prenatal development, their upbringing, their life experiences, their addictions, everything. Their friends, their relationships, all of that influence the will, including their own desire, and the result of all that influence is that the will makes a choice. But… that choice has been pre-determined by God.” Wouldn’t all those factors be included in the eternal decree? 

Force vs. Decree?

Date further explains: “Ultimately, they make a choice, and God has decreed that, but nothing is forcing their hand.” He goes on: “…there is no programming that is firing, in the world God has created, that brings about the action that God has decreed. So that’s what I mean by free. There is literally nothing forcing the agent’s hand to do what they nevertheless do, exactly as God has decreed.” 

In response, Davidson makes what I believe to be a fairly obvious point: technically, they are “forced.” Date asks what is forcing them, to which he responds, “the authorship.” And I have to ask, if the eternal decree of God is not powerful to “force” what happens in space-time, what is it good for? It seems to be simultaneously all-powerful and powerless. Anyone noticing a problem here? 

Date resorts to his escape hatch of the transcendence gap by insisting that the “authorship” doesn’t exist in time, therefore it doesn’t force individuals to act out the parts that have been written for them from eternity past. All that matters is that we “seem” to have a choice. That illusion of choice is sufficient to make each of us morally responsible, and it lets the God of Reformed theology off the hook. How convenient!

How the Analogy Fails

What the author analogy ultimately presents is an illusion of reality. Just as the choices of characters in a novel do not originate in themselves, but in the mind of the author, so too do the sinful thoughts, desires, and actions of human beings originate in the mind and will of God, according to compatibilism. Fictional characters are incapable of producing anything that doesn’t reside in their source. Just the same, human beings could not produce sinful thoughts and behaviors that did not originate in God. Fictional characters possess no actual agency, but we willfully adopt the illusion for the sake of the enjoyment of the story. In compatibilism, human agency is likewise a useful illusion. We are left to deceive ourselves into believing that we are actually making choices, and that we were able to have chosen differently than we did. Since all things that happen in space-time are included in God's decree, this illusion of free choice is also decreed from eternity past. 

The transcendence gap, as described by Date, only succeeds in separating reality from fiction. It effectively does the opposite of what he hopes by diminishing the sinfulness of sin. An author can write stories full of violence, death, and all sorts of sinful behaviors, yet himself retain innocence of those sins because those fictional characters are not actually sinning in real life. Their world carries no actual consequences for real individuals. They do not actually suffer pain or misery or death, so we do not hold the author accountable for any crimes or acts of cruelty committed within the story. Yet we know that what we experience is real. All the evils of this world are real. Our suffering is real, and we cannot be convinced otherwise. Likewise, our sin is real, and because it is, our guilt is real and deserving of judgment. And because all the evils of this world are real, the grace of God is every bit as real, possessing incomparable value.

Conclusion

If God has "authored" all history, He has inevitably written every aspect, including all the suffering and death that results from the sin that is within that story. To argue that God has meticulously authored every detail of the story and deny that He has authored sin is an irreconcilable contradiction. This analogy leaves us to conclude that either the “reality” we experience is pure fiction, or God is the author of real sin. The former does damage to God's power to create real beings made in His image. The latter is fatal to His holiness (Jeremiah 32:35). Neither option is acceptable, therefore we should reject the author analogy. If it is the best representation of compatibilism, we should reject compatibilism. If compatibilism is the best Reformed theology has to offer, we should reject Reformed theology. As Date said, “I think that non-Calvinists are right to object if there is a meaningful sense in which God is causing people to sin.” The author analogy cannot remove that meaningful sense, therefore we are right to maintain our objections.