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Determinism

Is Divine Determinism Compatible with Free Will?

2026-09-09 by Steve Forkin

Those in the Libertarian Free Will camp, mainly argue against Divine Determinism, claiming God does not physically, mentally or psychologically coerce human behaviour. This is a red-herring argument/claim since no real serious Calvinist in the classical sense believes this either

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In this article on determinism…

Notes

Those in the Libertarian Free Will camp, mainly argue against Divine Determinism, claiming God does not physically, mentally or psychologically coerce human behaviour.

This is a red-herring argument/claim since no real serious Calvinist in the classical sense believes this either, nor does what the Calvinist believes about Divine Determinism - i.e. how he would generally define this - result in God somehow coercing human behaviour and thereby logically removing the sense of responsibility that we all inherently understand to be attached to the notion that we make or can make free choices.

Does this now mean we actually believe the same thing and those who push for “Libertarian Free Will”?

Let’s dig in and make some clarifications and definitions so that we each can understand what is meant by and what each side understand by the terms in this debate.

The Libertarian Free Will argument rests on what is commonly known as the “PAP” = “The principle of alternate possibility”

Said in an other way: A human - in any given situation or scenario - can or could always do otherwise as he has or does decide to do, i.e. he can at the very last second change his mind and do the opposite of what he set out to do, or had decided to do. His mind “in the moment of chosing” can chose otherwise.

Naturally we all agree that the underlying assumption here is that there is no external coercion in this moment. When a thief as a gun at your head, demanding you hand over the keys to your car, you can say no, but very unlikley will and hence we speak of decision that was coerced by external factors.

Let’s all agree that even those who argue against divine determinism, don’t think Calvinists believe there is some kind of “divine gun” held against the head of the person who according to Calvinism, is coerced into deciding to believe in Christ, so the argument from those in the Libertarian camp. As said, apart from a few fringe people, this is not it..

However, all those in the general evangelical camp, who still believe in exhaustive divine foreknowledge of all future events. Yes there are peopl who call themselves “open theists”, those who believe does not know the future with any kind of degree of certainty. We are not reviewing or arguing against that position here. We are debating determinism with those who also believe that God has foreknowledge of all future events even the contingencies involved with the ability for humans to decide otherwise. However hard it may be to wrap the human mind around this, lets posit the following syllogism:

This, in essence is the argument by those in the camp called “Libertarian Free Will”.

The real hard question here is this:

If divine determinism entails the coercion of free human choices against his or her will, then - yes, I do think the conclusion follows from the premises. However and here is the kicker, if divine determinism does not entail the coercion of human choices against his or her will, then - No, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

Having established some common ground, we are left with the real issue, namely to establish what divine determinism entails and whether it is possible that a divine being could in some way effect a human outcome with absolute certainty without coercively influencing the human beings in their free choices, thereby establishing human resonsibility for their own actions, whilst also objectively determining a desired outcome.

You might be thinking, I have dug myself into a hole I cannot get back out of… Let’s see…

Proviso, am deliberately trying to keep the examples simple.

Calvinists who believe in “Divine Determinism” or “Exhaustive Divine Determinism” agree that it is neither like (1) or (2).

How can we resolve the issue? Perhaps we should actuall start by defining what we mean by the term “determine”

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us: “To discover the facts about something, to calculate something exactly” - a synonym: “establish”.

“The belief that people are not free to chose what they like or how they behave, because these things are decided by their environment and other influences over which they have no control.”

Now we are getting a little closer. Here is a common Calvinist definition that should allow us to dig a little deeper:

“The belief that God determines every event that occurs in the world, asserting that nothing happens outside of God’s sovereign will and control. All actions and events are part of God’s divine plan, including all moral choices and outcomes.”

Now we are getting somewhere. Another proviso. Some Calvinists will bork at this definition claiming that God ordains some events but not all, and whilst this is true, the difference between the two doesn’t matter so much for the general argument I am dealing with here, as we shall see.

The crucial question lies in the “HOW” ?

Proviso again – this one is important:

“Divine determinism does not entail either physical or logical determinism. When we speak of “physical determinism”, we mean there are only physical causes, i.e. matter and energy. Many scientists who reject everything outside of the “physical” i.e. they believe in matter and energy only and therefore are “physical determinists”. When we speak of “logical” determinism we mean all that occurs in the Universe follows a deterministic causal chain of events logically. Neither of these are what we Calvinists mean by divine determinism.

Notice how the earlier examples of the puppet-master and the mad-scientist fall into the “physical” or “logical” determinism category.

So what can we further say about Calvinistic Divine Determinism?

The big question that begs to be answered here is the HOW question

Before we move to that, notice what (A) and (B) do NOT say:

We are beginning to narrow down by exclusion.

Let’s assert something that everyone in this debate over determinism should be able to agree on:

[Certainly those of us who believe God has exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events]

“There is an intelligible sense in which, if God infallibly foreknows that an event E will occur, E is determined by God’s foreknowledge. E is determined, or fixed in advance, it simply cannot fail to occur, given God’s prior foreknowledge. God may not have decreed E, or actively willed that E occur, or resolved to bring about E by some means or other, but E is nevertheless entailed in/by God’s prior knowledge about E. E isn’t absolutely necessary, but is consequently necessary given God’s foreknowledge.”

In this weaker sense all protestants / evangelicals should be able to affirm this kind of “weaker determinism”. If you are unsure or are now feeling hoodwinked by me, please re-read the definition again carefully.

Now that we have resolved the knot at least a little and we can see that determinism isn’t such a bad word after all, we can work towards the real question that needs answered. How can God determine something like a human action or decision, without falling into the coercion trap?

Politicians attracting voters

Car Salesman selling cars

Yes I know these are somewhat contrived examples, and perhaps you have had a bad experience with car salesman.. please set that aside for the purpose of this little exercise. All I have demonstrated that we has humans can partially determine the outcome of human choices, without coercion them. We might more normally call that influence. Regardless it is in fact a partial determination of outcomes, without coercion.

Given these human attempts to determine the outcome of events without coercion, we can say the following about God.

Notice here is that I did not conclude “divine determinism is true”, in order to say that we first have to find out whether P1, P2 and P3 are true

So we can further say that if P1, P2 and P3 are true then C is true.

We can formalise this as a syllogism:

IMHO, this much any protestant has to concede, unless he is going to suggest that Christ died by accident.

Review Acts 4:23

THEREFORE:

Again however uncomfortable this might be for you, you must concede this truth if you want to be logically consistent.

I didn’t set out to prove that every single event in human history was divinely determined, I set out to demonstrate that it is possible & compatible with human freedom. That much is difficult to deny. It is at this point in my research that I came to realise that Calvinism is much more likely than unlikely.

List of Biblical examples of divine determining of human action:

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