Chesterton on Determinism, Calvinism, and Commentary Thereon

"The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. *It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.*"

"This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. *As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.*"

"When tallying who the greatest heretic in Christian history might be, or at least, the greatest heretical doctrine, there are certainly a few sterling examples. Some might start with Saint Paul himself, oft cited as the originator of Christianity. It was Paul who, with his scholarly Jewish mind and particular spiritual vexations that turned the experience of Christ into a full religion. But I think one needs to better understand Paul's context to know his motivations and to read his works effectively and fruitfully. . . ."

"If I were obligated to pick one, which I guess in truth is presumptuous of me, then I would have to pick John Calvin. The influence of his life - from French lawyer to Reformation theologian to facist Genevan politician - may not have been so great. But the reverberations from his theology echo through history to our present state where Christianity may be entirely subsumed by his spiritual heirs (or "errs", as the case may be)."

"Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Calvin is that he almost got it right. He understood, correctly, that because of sin and human finitude, we cannot be active agents in our own salvation. The only active agent is God Himself, calling us through grace to be united to Him. God chooses to save us, we do not save ourselves by works or choices."

"Unfortunately, Calvin treats the subject the only way, I suppose, a lawyer could treat the subject. Martin Luther, who had the roughly same idea about salvation, was an Augustinian monk and therefore, rather than being true Reformation thinker, was much closer to Mediaeval ideas about God and spirituality. The Mediaeval period was one motivated very much by internal spiritual experience: the personal experiene of the Divine that lead one to internal transformation. In touch personally and intimately with God, the supreme Love of God becomes very clear. Indeed, Love becomes understood not merely as an attribute of God, but as a synonym for God."

"Calvin is very much a Reformation thinker, however. When the Black Death ended the Mediaeval era, the intimacy of God seemed very far off. As a reaction, society founded the Modern era, based on the principle of externality... Internal experience did not save people from the plague, so they instead sought to understand all the forces outside themselves, pursuing external knowledge. The promise of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment was that through external knowledge, we could gain control over the forces affecting us. Indeed, the last 600 years of civilization have been naught but an immature knee-jerk reaction to the Black Death."

"The Reformation was not so certain that we could obtain control. It did, however, maintain the emphasis on external knowledge. God was just as far off for the Reformers as He was for the Scientific Revolutionaries. Luther's great objection was to any form of righteousness, such as the sale of indulgences, that did not lead to internal change and intimacy with God. Calvin responded that your internal state is irrelevant. His objection was to what he perceived to be a misinterpreted set of rules."

"Let a lawyer interpret Scripture and this is what you get. Rather than view Scripture as testimony to the faith of those that had gone on before us, the love affair of these writers with the Word, Calvin viewed Scripture as a legal document in need of proper interpretation. This legalistic approach further infects his theology: just as the Bible is a legal codebook, God is a transcendent Judge, with Whom and regarding Whom Love has no meaning."

"Calvin's great heresy, then, is divesting God of Love. In the entirety of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, the word "love" only appears twice, and both times it is in reference to the love we owe God. Without Love, Calvin reduces God to brute power concepts and legalistic approaches."

"God as the active agent in salvation ceases to be the transendent Being of passionate love for humanity, abiding patiently with each person until they eventually find their solace in Him... Instead, He is replaced by a version of Himself that chooses who is saved and who is damned without rhyme or reason except to exert His own power. Everything is oriented towards God's glory, His every action to assert His glory, our every religious devotion to praise that glory. He is an egotistical God, absolutely corrupted by His own absolute power."

"Unfortunately, the reaction of Christianity to Calvin was disasterously wrong-headed. What ended up happening with the Evangelical movement was the dismissal of those parts that Calvin actually got right and the retention of that which he got wrong. The Evangelicals insisted, as they do to this day, that humans are the only active agents in salvation. God has nothing to do with it, but instead, one is saved by "making a decision for Christ". They sought in this Decision Theology a gracious escape from Calvin's loveless God of arbitrary damnation."

"But because these reactionaries were also products of the Modern era, they kept the emphasis on external knowledge. They still insist upon reading Scripture as a legal codebook in need of proper interpretation and therefore continue to view God as an essentially loveless Judge. God's Love, once exaulted by mystics and theologians as God's primary and defining characteristic, has been reduced to subservience to God's Justice. Theirs is a God who imposes punishment upon people for breaking His rules, and Love once again has been subordinated and effectively eliminated as a characteristic of God's at all."

"In many Evangelical minds, God's Love is expressed by His desire to committ violence against us. Yet it is also expressed by God providing the legal loophole by which we can avoid His violence: Jesus Christ. Luther might object that Decision Theology does not cause inward change nor breed internal experience, but is rather a way of externally controlling and compelling God to save us through a legal clause."

"As I suggested at the outset, Calvinism in-and-of itself is not as influential as Calvin's Modernist approach to the faith. This approach, carried on in Evangelicalism, now threatens to subsume all of Christianity. Through media communiations, the message of Evangelicalism has managed to spread, convincing millions of people that theirs is the only true and valid form of Christianity. Even those who do not believe in Christianity have accepted that Evangelicalism is the "true" Christianity and often have disdain for those Christians who do not conform to Evangelical standards. This is what I mean when I say that Calvinism is the greatest heresy the Church has ever faced."

"How would I respond to the Calvinist, though? Not easily, since Calvinism by nature reduces the framework of discussion and has justified itself in tidy dogmatic packages. Calvinism only allows theological discourse in terms of dissecting a legal code, analyzing Scripture chapter-and-verse to determine the correct dogmas. Suggest that God is Love, and a Calvinist would ask 'what Bible verse says that?'"

"If one were to bring up any number of the verses that describe God's Love for humanity, then these would be neatly disposed of in favour of a theology built on other passages of judgement and wrath and power. Calvinism is a very, very tight doctrine... Coiled up as tight as a snake eating its own tail."

"Catholic journalist, columnist and humourist G.K. Chesterton once went about describing lunacy as a circle that is just not wide enough. There may be no way, logically, to prove to an asylum inmate that they are not the rightful heir to the throne of England. The horror of lunacy, he insisted, was not that the subject has lost all their Reason, but that they have lost everything but their Reason... They have tidied everything up in a perfect logical circle, impenetrable to attempts to puncture with Reason."

"Chesterton's solution? 'Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument.'"

"In the same manner, one might respond to the Calvinist that their theology make a quite tidy circle, but it is a very small circle. Chesterton even speaks specifically of Calvin when making his case of logic being the mother of lunacy: 'Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin.'"

"There is a circle quite larger than the circle of Calvinism. It is the circle that understands the infinity of God's Love. It is the circle that reads Scripture and, without needing or necessarily being able to point to a single proof text, recognizes that the message of the Gospel is Love. It is the circle that allows Scripture to move us to an inward change and internal experience of God rather than forcing it to feed back on itself as its own object."

"It is a circle that is able to repsond to perhaps the grestest objection of the heresy - the lunacy - of Calvinism: When asked about the Love of God, His supreme and sacrificial Love for humanity that caused Him to send His Son to die so that we may be united to Him, His Love which created us for Love and His Love which sustains us for that cause, many Calvinists state that it is presumptuous and arrogant of us to think that we are so important. Why should we be so significant that God should Love us so much? The response is simply that we do not know why God should care so much about us in our utter insignificance, but He does, and that is grace."

One of the attacks of the Arminian against the Calvinist is that the Calvinist God is not "loving" because He did not die for every last sin of every last man, woman, and child that ever lived. They define love in terms of universalism. They make it so that God must have done such and so in order to be truly perceived by His creation as "loving".

Thanks for the clarification.

As to the above statement, I will say that of all of the years I was a member of an Arminian Church I never heard that, thank goodness. After reading all of these things on Arminians here, I wonder what Church actually teaches these things. I never heard any of them, honestly.

”After reading all of these things on Arminians here, I wonder what Church actually teaches these things. I never heard any of them, honestly.”

I never knew there were different theologies. I just thought there were some who believed you could lose your salvation and others who didn’t. And then there were the Catholics. But once I did some investigating I’ve found there’s far more to it as I believe you are starting to realize. That shows a seeking heart.

Most churches today hold shades of Arminian views. To make it more complicated, many doctrines such as the Arminian view of “once save always save” mirrors the Calvinistic view of “perseverance of the saints” although they are not the same thing. I believe this mirroring of doctrine is because there are irrefutable verses in the scriptures for which any fair minded scholar has to accept. It also clouds the differences in theologies which require carefully sorting out and may be why you don’t believe you’ve heard the Arminian view. But the subtlety exists.

I’ll use my Southern Baptist church for example. Consider this view from their statement of faith:

Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and comprehends all the means in connection with the end.

Calvinism would completely agree with the first sentence. But to says Election is “consistent” with the “free agency of man” is to negate God’s sovereignty, contradict the first sentence, and introduces the Arminian belief into the church. It is not “election” if man chooses. The Southern Baptist rarely goes on to further define anything and never says HOW it is consistent. Just that it is. People ignore solid doctrinal understanding in lewd of just running off to preach the word. (BTW-the Southern Baptist are starting to question their doctrinal stances as more and more are splitting into Arminian/Calvinists sides.

Since the Arminian view is the most popular view today you are most likely subject to it unless you attend a Reformed church. You just probably don’t know it.

"Churches must not all go by every tenet of it or something, because honestly, I have never heard of several of these things."

Well, to be perfectly honest, Arminian Theologians are of one mind only on what the Atonement DOES NOT mean -that Christ received the punishment for the sins of those for whom he died.

I'm pinging "the Grammarian" to help you understand just why it is that you, as an Arminian, are NOT supposed to believe that Jesus received the punishment for the sins of those for whom he died.

He might also give reason as to why you have not heard this in your church -even when paying attention.

Of course, since Arminian theology is rather diverse in a positive declaration of what you, as an Arminian, are supposed to believe, I don't know if he can be of much help there.

Jean

"Churches must not all go by every tenet of it or something, because honestly, I have never heard of several of these things."

That's because, ladyinred, many Arminian churches prefer not to get too deep into controversial doctrines like these, holding with the Salvation Army that we as Christians are to live by "deeds, not creeds." I personally think we do our brothers and sisters a disservice by not discussing these sorts of things with them in our preaching, but that is the predominant view among pastors.

Well, to be perfectly honest, Arminian Theologians are of one mind only on what the Atonement DOES NOT mean -that Christ received the punishment for the sins of those for whom he died.

Imagine my surprise to be pinged out of the blue by Jean.

Here is a diagram that attempts to explain the difference between the different theories of the atonement. The problem Arminians have with accepting Penal Substitutionary Theory (which some Calvinists harp on as though it were actually part of the gospel) is that it forces a view of limited atonement as a logical consequence. Arminians universally believe that Christ died to "taste death for every man," as Hebrews 2:9 puts it. In attempting to explain the Atonement, Arminians prefer to rely on multiple theories to explain different facets of it--just as the Biblical authors did (compare Paul's language in describing the Atonement in Romans 3 and that of the author of Hebrews throughout that epistle, for example). Calvinists prefer to focus exclusively on Penal Substitutionary Theory, and sometimes, as a result, Arminians emphasize another theory, usually the Priestly-Sacrificial or Moral Governmental Theories, at the expense of using the Penal Substitutionary Theory.

I'm pinging "the Grammarian" to help you understand just why it is that you, as an Arminian, are NOT supposed to believe that Jesus received the punishment for the sins of those for whom he died.

That would be because it forces conclusions untenable to the Arminian understanding of God, namely that the God Who is Love hates some people (even people his own loved ones love) and damned them to hell without regard to any sense of mercy or compassion. It also inculcates the belief that God does not save people, but has already saved all those whom he plans to save (even if they don't know it yet). Thus, you get the consequence that Christians aren't being saved by God at a particular point in time, but are simply realizing that they have already been saved (which smacks of Gnosticism, the original New Age religion, to me).

He might also give reason as to why you have not heard this in your church -even when paying attention.

As far as it goes, you likely haven't heard anything about this in your church because many Arminians 1) prefer not to discuss that point of systematic theology at all, or 2) because your church actually does use Penal Substitutionary Theory in its descriptions of the Atonement, but denies the logical consequence that would derive from it, namely, that Christ died only for the elect (limited atonement).

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