Subtitle: From Theological Determinism to the Antecedents of Human Choice
What Follows
Before turning to Bignon’s book, I want to establish the record from the debate itself. The three clips that follow are brief, but they are important. They show that Bignon repeatedly and explicitly affirms theological determinism, including the statement that “God determines everything that happens.”
With that foundation established, I will then turn to Bignon’s book, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God, to examine how he develops that position in greater detail—particularly his treatment of the antecedent conditions of human choice, divine providence, human desires, and moral responsibility. The question is not simply what Bignon calls his position, but whether his own explanation ultimately resolves—or reinforces—the determinist problem.
Debate Evidence #1 — Bignon Explicitly Affirms Theological Determinism
(Dinesh D’Souza): Guillaume, if I may, I just want to put that question to you that ended my summary. I’m happy to address all the issues that you raised in your opening remarks. But the first question I asked, because as you know from the sort of Twitter debate, the X debate, there’s so much of you don’t understand, this is not what we believe, this is not what we think. So I want to ask you, as a sort of leading Calvinist and philosopher of Calvinism, this description, this description of strong sovereignty on God’s part that I gave, do you agree with it or not?
(Guillaume Bignon): Well, it’s not just a lump sum, like everything. They have a lot of different things and there’s certainly some things that I would say differently, but let me be very clear. I affirm the theological determinist position. So yes, God determines everything that happens. These are the two views. It’s either that the choices of men are determined by all of those circumstances at the moment of choice or holding them in place, it’s still the case that they could choose one or the other categorically open. These are the two views and there’s [no] shying away, God determines those things.
Evidence: Bignon explicitly identifies himself with the theological determinist position and states plainly, “God determines everything that happens.”
Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 45:00–46:30.
Debate Evidence #2 — D’Souza Identifies the Antecedent Conditions
(Dinesh D’Souza): Here’s what I want you to admit to, and I hope you will, because I think this is what you believe, that even though God determines our brain states, God determines all our past, our past events, the family we’re born into, the books we read, the influences inside my brain. God determines everything on the inside and therefore my very desires, my preferences, my wishes, including my desire from God, ultimately is determined internally by God himself. Is that true or is that false?
(Guillaume Bignon): Are you asking me again if I affirm theological determinism? Because I understand I have a French accent, but I thought I really repeated this a number of times. I affirm theological determinism.
Evidence: D’Souza explicitly lays out the antecedent conditions he believes follow from Bignon’s theological determinism—past events, family, books, internal influences, brain states, desires, preferences, and wishes. Rather than rejecting the underlying determinist premise, Bignon responds by again appealing to his affirmation of theological determinism.
Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 1:31:00–1:32:30.
Debate Evidence #3 — Bignon Again Refuses to Retreat from Theological Determinism
(Dinesh D’Souza): But I think I’ve given an accurate picture of what you are saying and I think it would help the debate if you say, Yes, I agree, or No, I’m saying something different about David.
(Guillaume Bignon): There was so much going on here that I don’t agree with all the formulation. I don’t know how much clearer I can be about saying that I affirm theological determinism.
Evidence: When given a direct opportunity either to affirm D’Souza’s characterization or explain that he is saying something fundamentally different, Bignon objects to “all the formulation,” but once again explicitly reaffirms his position: “I affirm theological determinism.”
Dinesh D’Souza and Guillaume Bignon, “Calvinism and Pre-Destination,” The Gospel Truth debate, YouTube video, approximately 2:00–2:30.
EVIDENTIARY PROGRESSION
Evidence #1:
- “I affirm the theological determinist position. So yes, God determines everything that happens.”
Evidence #2:
- D’Souza identifies what that means for the antecedent conditions of human choice; Bignon does not abandon theological determinism.
Evidence #3:
- When challenged to affirm or deny D’Souza’s characterization, Bignon again says, “I affirm theological determinism.”
This gives us a solid video record before we bring the book back into the analysis.
GUILLAUME BIGNON’S BOOK
Guillaume Bignon’s Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil offers an extended philosophical defense of Calvinism against the charge that theological determinism undermines human moral responsibility and implicates God in evil.
The work is especially relevant to the present argument because Bignon does not avoid the language of determinism. Rather, he seeks to explain how determinism, divine providence, human freedom, and moral responsibility can be coherently held together. The following excerpts examine that argument on Bignon’s own terms, with particular attention to what his account entails when the antecedent conditions leading to human choices are themselves under God’s providential control.
… Let us then examine these active/passive counterfactuals of determinist free will. For any given sinner and sin about which one wants to maintain a language of divine permission in the sense under discussion, Calvinists would have to affirm:
1) If God were to actively intervene, the sinner would not commit the sin
And,
2) If God were to passively refrain from intervening, the sinner would commit the sin.
To establish the coherence of the model at hand, the question to address is this: how can Calvinists affirm those propositions, and more specifically, how could God be said to “passively refrain” from anything, if he is determining even the very choice to sin? To answer this question, let me begin by drawing an important distinction between two different sorts of causal factors that are at play in determining whether or not the sinner will sin. That human decision is influenced by two sorts of such factors: on the one hand are this person’s nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice, and on the other hand are all the immediate influencers at that moment of choice: which circumstances he is placed in, and which forces— internal and external, natural and supernatural—are, on that moment, drawing him in different directions to make his choice one way or the other. Note that this conceptual distinction is uncontroversial: these two types of influences are affirmed by all libertarians as well. Only they maintain that all these influences do not collectively determine the choice one way or the other, but they do influence it.418 This uncontroversial distinction, then, allows Calvinists to affirm this: God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences, but his so-called “passivity” or “refraining from intervention” can be expressed legitimately with respect to his supernatural influence on the moment of choice. That is a point at which Calvinists can find a very legitimate asymmetry of divine action. If God were to refrain from that active drawing on the moment of choice, then the sinner would sin, because all that would be left within him to express itself in decision-making would be his nature and prior character, which of course Calvinists affirm are corrupted by original sin. Apart from God actively extending his grace to them, fallen sinners sin. “Man without grace can will nothing but evil,” says Martin Luther.419 The doctrine of original sin, understood very minimally as entailing that humans have a fallen nature that inclines them uniformly toward sin (no need here for anything stronger like total depravity, original guilt or anything remotely controversial for Christians), explains the truth of one of our two counterfactuals: “If God were to refrain from divine intervention (namely an inner intervention in the form of a positive drawing of grace on the heart of the fallen sinner), the sinner would sin.”
This conclusion is secured for every choice made by persons affected by original sin. Of course, one may raise the question of Adam’s sin, but I shall come back to it later. For now, let us turn to the second counterfactual in the pair, namely “If God were to actively intervene, the sinner would refrain from sinning.” It is all the more easily affirmed by Calvinists in light of their doctrine of so-called “irresistible grace.”420 There is according to Calvinists no amount of sinful inclination that divine grace cannot overcome. Philosophically, this comes from their upholding determinism, and it yields exactly the desired theological result: there always exists a type of supernatural drawing available to God, such that if he were to apply it, the sinner would refrain from sinning and would do the right thing instead. This secures the counterfactual at hand, and with it the truth of the active/passive counterfactual pair, thereby justifying the asymmetry at the moment of choice in this specific type of situation, and hence an appropriate language of divine permission in the face of determinism.
NOTES
418. “Of course this should not be taken to mean that freedom is the absence of influences, either external or internal. For someone to act, certain causal conditions are necessary. Rather, it means that these do not determine or necessitate our choices or actions.” Reichenbach, “Reformed View of God,” 69. See also Walls and Dongell, Not a Calvinist, 107.
419. Luther, Bondage of the Will, 318.
420. It might even be that no one but Calvinists can affirm such strong counterfactuals.
Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 262–63, nn. 418–20 (p. 275).
HIGHLIGHTED QUOTES
Here Bignon acknowledges the very point at issue: God’s involvement does not begin at the moment of choice; on Calvinism, God has already determined the conditions that shaped the sinner and continues to determine what happens at the moment of sin.
“I suppose that one could object that focusing in this way on God’s action at the moment of sin in relative disregard to his prior involvement in the person’s character-building is inappropriate …for Calvinists as they must maintain that God determined both…. The point was not to relieve God from his control of evil, whether in creating sinners or in providentially controlling their sins….On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.” —p. 263
And the very next paragraph reinforces the point:
“the sled was initially placed on the track by the very same persons who subsequently piloted it down the track. They are thoroughly causally responsible for its present sliding down the track…” —p. 264
PASSING COMMENTS
The determinist implications of Bignon’s account are evident from his own formulation. He explains that the sinner’s decision is determined by two layers of causal factors: first, “nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice”; and second, the immediate circumstances and “forces—internal and external, natural and supernatural” operating at the moment of choice.
This framework is significant because Bignon then states that “God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences.” The choice, therefore, is not presented as arising in isolation. Rather, the person arrives at the moment of decision with a given history, nature, character, set of desires, circumstances, and operative influences already in place—and Bignon maintains that God providentially controls them all.
Bignon then introduces the decisive counterfactual. If God were to intervene with a particular supernatural influence, the sinner would choose differently; if God refrains from that influence, the sinner will sin. On this account, the choice appears to be the inevitable result of the antecedent conditions God has providentially arranged, together with the particular divine influence—or non-influence—God supplies at the moment of choice.
The difficulty, then, is that Bignon’s account appears to generate an internal tension. On the one hand, he insists that Calvinism does not diminish divine control:
- “On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.”
He also anticipates the objection that it is improper to focus on God’s action at the moment of sin while neglecting God’s prior involvement in forming the person’s character, and he acknowledges that Calvinists “must maintain that God determined both.”
On the other hand, Bignon seeks to preserve a morally significant distinction between God’s “active” intervention and His “passive” refraining, so that the sinner’s sin may still be described as something God merely “permitted.” Yet the relevant features of the case remain comprehensive:
- God controls the person’s nature and history, controls the circumstances, controls the internal and external influences, and controls the supernatural influence at the moment of choice.
Given those premises, Bignon attempts to locate the morally relevant distinction in God’s decision either to apply or withhold that final supernatural influence. The problem is that the allegedly “passive” condition under which the sinner sins is itself embedded within a divinely determined causal order. Accordingly, the appeal to passivity does not remove the determination of the choice. It merely distinguishes between which divine determination produces the choice.
For this reason, Bignon’s “passivity” should not be understood as ordinary passivity. If I merely refrain from interfering with another person’s decision, it does not follow that I have determined what that person will do. Bignon’s model, however, is stronger: God has already providentially controlled the entire background that brings the person to the decision, and Bignon states that the sinner would sin if God refrained from the relevant supernatural intervention. In that context, the “refraining” itself becomes consequentially determinative.
Stated differently, if God determines all the antecedent conditions that determine what the sinner will choose, then it is unclear what “permission” can mean other than God’s determination of the sinner’s choice through a different point in the causal chain.
This point does not depend on D’Souza’s characterization of Bignon’s position. The statement “On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things” is Bignon’s own wording.
KNEE DEEP
Bignon’s Own Words: God Determines the Whole Process
The significance of Bignon’s discussion on pages 258–59 becomes much clearer when it is read alongside what he says later on pages 262–63. Taken together, these passages establish a continuous account of divine determination that begins well before the moment of human choice. This is important because the argument does not require us to reconstruct what Bignon must believe from his affirmation of theological determinism. Bignon himself describes God as determining the antecedent conditions that lead to the choice.
In the burglar analogy, Bignon first explains why the ordinary passer-by is different from God under Calvinism. The passer-by has encountered the burglar but has not participated in creating the person who stands before him.
The action of “permitting” is supposed to feature a “hands-off” attitude, almost a passive disengagement on the part of God. It must be a “refraining” from some sort of intervention, thereby letting, or allowing, the evil action to unfold without stepping in. These concepts are the reason why determinism is thought to be problematic here, because if God determines all things, how can he be “hands-off” anything in the requisite sense?
To answer that question and unpack these notions of passivity, permission, and asymmetry, it is helpful to start with a simple, intuitive, and uncontroversial example, which captures well the sense of permission we are looking for. Suppose that a burglar is climbing up a ladder to break into the window of a 3rd floor apartment, when a passer-by approaches the foot of the ladder and sees him up there, halfway to the top, climbing to break in. At this point, the passer-by has a decision to make.
Among the numerous possibilities open to him, two of them are of special interest for us: on the one hand, he could decide to prevent the burglary, say by pushing down the ladder and tripping the burglar. If he were to do so, the burglary would be prevented. Otherwise, if for whatever reason the passer-by thinks it preferable not to do so (he might find it wrong to send the burglar to a likely hospital bed, or he might be scared by the prospect of a future vengeance, or any good reason one could imagine), he then might decide to refrain from intervening, passively allowing the burglary to occur.
This sort of situation captures very well the intuitions at play when we think of “permission” of evil in the sense relevant for our present purposes. The asymmetry in the passer-by’s action is easy to appreciate here: whether or not the burglary occurs is at this point fully under his control; it is providentially up to him, but depending on which option he chooses, his action will vary in kind: if he decides against the burglary, he will need to actively, intently, perform the positive action of pushing the ladder, thereby preventing the evil at hand. But if he finds it preferable for the burglary to occur, then his control will be a purely passive refraining from any intervention, thereby permitting this evil, knowing that if he were to not intervene, the burglary would occur.
This situation exhibits the sense of asymmetry we are looking for, and I suggest that if theologians are to properly apply permission language to God, it will involve something very much like that.
But of course, some differences between the passer-by and God (especially on Calvinism) immediately come to mind. For one, the passer-by is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation, nor does he actively draw on the burglar’s heart and mind to influence his decision at the moment of choice, whereas on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place, and when it comes to “intervening” or not, though external interventions of the same type as “kicking a ladder” are certainly available to God, the type of intervention Christians typically have in view is an internal intervention, providentially influencing the hearts and minds of persons directly. These points are well taken and I shall discuss what can and cannot carry over when applying these concepts to God.
Nevertheless, there is something that the ladder-kicking passer-by and the burglar tell us about permission and asymmetry in divine providence, and I suggest that it is this: they tell us that proper use of permission language to rescue asymmetry in one’s providential activity rests upon the truth of two important conditional, counterfactual statements that were casually stated above in the discussion of the passer-by. These two statements were as follows:
1) If the passer-by were to actively intervene (by kicking the ladder), the burglar would not commit the crime.
And,
2) If the passer-by were to passively refrain from intervening, the burglar would commit the crime.
Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 258–59. (Paragraphs split up into smaller sections for ease of reading)
BIGNON’S ROW TO HOE
Bignon specifically says that the passer-by:
“is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation” — Bignon, p. 258
God, however, is fundamentally different within the Calvinist model. Bignon writes:
“whereas on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place” — Bignon, p. 259
He then explains that the divine involvement is not restricted to external circumstances. The intervention Calvinists have in view can be internal, involving God:
“providentially influencing the hearts and minds of persons directly.” — Bignon, p. 259
This is the first important link in the argument. Bignon is not merely saying that God determines what happens after a person has developed a particular character. He explicitly says that God “providentially determines the character and choice” in the first place. The character that precedes the choice is therefore itself within God’s providential determination. That becomes even more significant when Bignon later explains what he means by the influences that lead to a human decision. He divides them into two categories. The first consists of the person’s:
“nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, all the way from his conception up until the moment of choice” — Bignon, p. 262
The second consists of the immediate influences present when the choice is actually made:
“which circumstances he is placed in, and which forces—internal and external, natural and supernatural—are, on that moment, drawing him in different directions to make his choice one way or the other.” — Bignon, p. 262
Bignon then makes the crucial statement:
“God is in full providential control of both sorts of influences.”
— Bignon, p. 262
That statement is particularly important because it closes off an obvious escape route. One might otherwise argue that although Calvinism says God determines the choice, the various conditions that produced the person who makes that choice remain outside God’s determining activity. But that is not Bignon’s description. He explicitly includes nature, nurture, life events, and character-formation history, extending from conception to the moment of choice, and then says that God is in “full providential control” of those influences.
Bignon even anticipates the objection that his focus on God’s action at the moment of sin might appear to disregard God’s earlier involvement in forming the person. He acknowledges the issue directly:
“one could object that focusing in this way on God’s action at the moment of sin in relative disregard to his prior involvement in the person’s character-building is inappropriate” — Bignon, p. 263
But Bignon does not answer by denying that prior involvement. Quite the opposite. He says Calvinists:
“must maintain that God determined both” — Bignon, p. 263
and then states:
“On Calvinism, God clearly determines all these things.” — Bignon, p. 263
That is a remarkable admission in the context of the argument. Bignon recognizes that God’s involvement cannot simply be restricted to the final moment of choice, because Calvinism maintains that God has already determined the conditions involved in the person’s character-building. His answer is not to retreat from that claim, but to affirm it.
The chronology Bignon gives us is therefore important. There is a prior history—nature, nurture, life events, and character formation. That history produces a particular character and set of inclinations. There are then immediate circumstances and internal and external influences at the moment of choice. And finally there is the choice itself. Bignon places God’s providential determination across this entire sequence.
His own description can therefore be laid out simply:
The important point is that this chain is not something we have constructed by taking Bignon’s premises and extending them beyond what he actually says. Bignon supplies the links himself. He says that God determines everything that comes to pass; he says God providentially determines the person’s character and choice; he says God is in full providential control of the influences extending from conception through character formation and of the immediate influences at the moment of choice; and he explicitly says, “God determined both” and “God clearly determines all these things.”
This becomes especially important for Bignon’s discussion of divine permission. The passer-by analogy works intuitively because the passer-by encounters an already-existing burglar. The passer-by did not create the burglar’s character, did not determine his criminal inclinations, and did not establish the history that brought him to that moment. The passer-by can therefore refrain from intervening without having determined the antecedent conditions that produced the burglary.
But Bignon himself says that the Calvinist case is different. The passer-by:
“is not involved at all in the burglar’s prior character formation” — Bignon, p. 258
whereas:
“on Calvinism, God providentially determines the character and choice of the burglar in the first place.” — Bignon, p. 259
That is precisely where the question of permission becomes more difficult. If God merely encounters an independently formed agent and chooses not to prevent the agent’s action, the distinction between causing and permitting is relatively straightforward. But if God has already providentially determined the agent’s character, has control over the antecedent influences from conception onward, controls the circumstances and immediate influences surrounding the decision, and determines the choice itself, then God’s relationship to the evil cannot be analyzed solely by looking at whether God intervened at the final instant.
In other words, the question cannot simply be, “Did God intervene when the sinner made the choice?” Bignon’s own account requires us to look at what happened BEFORE the choice. And according to Bignon, God was already providentially determining the relevant conditions.
This is why the pages 258–59 passage is so important to the larger argument. It establishes the antecedent side of the equation, while pages 262–63 make that antecedent control explicit and comprehensive.
Bignon does not merely affirm that God determines the final decision while leaving the development of the person unexplained. He places the person’s character, character-formation history, nature and nurture, life events, circumstances, internal and external influences, and ultimately the choice itself within God’s providential determination.
So the argument does not need to say:
- “If Bignon’s theological determinism is true, then God must control the antecedent conditions.”
The stronger—and more defensible—claim is:
Bignon says that God controls the antecedent conditions.
And that is what makes these passages so important. The issue is no longer merely what an opponent says Calvinism logically entails.
THE EVIDENTIARY RECORD COMES FROM
BIGNON’S OWN DESCRIPTION OF CALVINISM.